


A Reasonable Mistake

by DoveHeart



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bodyswap, Comedy, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Is it platonic or romantic? Yes, Magical Accidents, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:41:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27708509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoveHeart/pseuds/DoveHeart
Summary: Felix came face to face with himself.It could have been a mirror, two Felixes equally horrified at the sight of the other, except the other him said, “This was not supposed to happen. This was not supposed to happen at all.”“What’s going on?” Felix demanded, his voice higher than usual. He coughed. “I mean what’s-?” He coughed again. Something was wrong with his voice. He shook his head. Caught a glimpse of red hair out of the corner of his eye. Reached up very slowly and took hold of a loop of hair. Tugged. Looked down, even more slowly.“No,” he said in Annette’s voice, taking hold of Annette’s skirt with Annette’s hand.---Annette's been working so hard lately that something like this was always bound to happen.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic & Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 16
Kudos: 68





	1. Prologue: The Night Before

**Author's Note:**

> I actually stole the premise of this from one of OhNoHello's Kinktober prompts, which I hope is okay! But honestly how can one resist this most perfect of bodyswap combinations? I hope you enjoy reading it even half as much as I enjoyed writing it.

"I'm your girl!" said Annette brightly, pushing the last of the library books onto the shelf. "Of course I'll be able to talk you through the seminar."

"You're a lifesaver," said Dorothea, hands clasped at her chest in gratitude, the image of an operatic heroine. "I really hate to put you out, but Professor Hanneman always goes so fast, and I never know when his tangents begin so I always end up in a huge mess."

"It's no trouble at all! I made extensive notes, so it'd be pretty mean to keep them to myself!"

"I wouldn't usually ask, but you know how dangerous things can get when you don't quite know what you're doing."

"Oh boy, do I!" There was another book on the table waiting to be reshelved that she'd somehow overlooked - _Accursed: being a study in two parts of legends of the hidden crests commissioned by His Imperial Majesty Ionius IV_. "I saw a lot of accidents at my school in Fhirdiad. And I was only involved in some of them!" She picked it up, frowning. _Now where do you live?_ After a while she noticed the silence. "Oh, but I'm much more careful now!" she added quickly.

Dorothea laughed. "I'm not worried. And anyway, it's all theory, right?"

"Right, exactly. One hundred per cent safe."

There was no way another book would fit on the shelf. Is what another, less diligent, student might have thought. Annette dug her fingers between a pair of spines and forced a gap.

"When would be a good time for you?" asked Dorothea.

Annette jammed the corner of the book into the gap. "Any time you're free! Just come find me and we can go through it."

"You aren't busy at all?" Dorothea cocked her head quizzically.

"Too busy to discuss thaumatokinetic sigils? Uh, I don't think so!" The gap in the bookshelf was patently too small to fit this book. Annette wiggled it about in case it would help, wondering idly if there was any chance at all that she could look as good in hats as Dorothea.

"Okay, well, if you're sure. Thank you so much. I owe you!"

"No, you're totally doing me a favour! It's always so much easier to retain this stuff when I go through it like this."

Dorothea thanked her effusively again and left her to it. The book was halfway in. A less perfection-oriented student might have left it at that, but Annette just kept on hammering it in by millimetres, subtly, so as not to attract the attention of Tomas or the priests perusing their scripture.

She almost had it in when she saw Mercedes in the corridor outside. "Mercie!" she hissed. "Mercie, are we still on for studying tomorrow?"

Mercedes glided into the library. "Of course. I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Yay! You _need_ to show me how you get the range on your spells." She gave the book another thump.

"I don't think that's going to fit, Annie," said Mercedes doubtfully.

"Oh, it'll be fine." She hit it again, and thought she heard something ping close by, like something small and metallic thrown with force. "So, what have you been baking for us? Scrumptious cake? Tarts with homemade jam? Shortbread? Iced buns?" Had she remembered to have a lunch break today? She wasn't sure, but the vividness of Mercedes' imaginary baking in her mind and stomach said 'probably not'.

"I actually haven't had the time," said Mercedes. "I hope you aren't too disappointed. Do you want me to help you with that?"

"No, I've got it!" Another thump on the book, and another ping. It was definitely loosening, she thought. There must have been air caught between the pages or something. Annette 1, bookshelf 0.

"I was thinking we could go shopping together," said Mercedes. "Are you free later?"

"Just give me a second and I'm free now! As long as we can see Professor Hanneman on the way, because I have a couple of things to ask him."

"You work so hard," said Mercedes fondly.

"Oh, and if we go by the greenhouse I said I'd do a favour for Lysithea." She gave the book another thump for good measure, and it settled perfectly into place. "There," she said. "All-"

Something popped off the side of the bookshelf, followed quickly by a small explosion of books which showered in a painful series of claps and clatters and violent papery rustles on the desks and floor. All eyes turned to Annette.

"On second thought, let's reschedule to tomorrow, shall we?" said Mercedes.

A loose page fluttered down.

"Tomorrow sounds good," said Annette, crestfallen.

*

Felix sanded the sliver of wood down even further, till it was so thin he could almost see his fingers through it, and brushed the fine shavings away. He held up his empty sword sheath and peered into it. It might fit.

"I thought I might find you here."

He didn't bother looking up. It was just Ingrid, and he knew what Ingrid looked like. And more than that, he knew what Ingrid looked like when she used that tone of voice. Sylvain had called it her horse voice ever since he'd heard her use it on a misbehaving animal, but as far as Felix was concerned it was her Felix-and-Sylvain voice, which only a very occasional horse would behave badly enough to warrant.

He lined up the sliver of wood with the mouth of his sheath, worn smooth and loose with repeated drawings and sheathings of its sword. A tight fit. Good. Some swordfighters used glue when repairing a sheath, and Felix had as low an opinion of them as he had for any laziness.

"Did you hear me?"

"Get on with it," he said, balanced the sheath between his knees and gave the wood a tap. A very tight fit. The wood might split if he wasn’t careful. But if he sanded off any more he'd lose the grip.

"Excuse me?" said Ingrid.

"If you want to lecture me, that's fine, but can you at least hold this?" He held up the hammer until she took it from him.

"First, let me be clear that I don't _want_ to lecture you."

"Fine, if you're _going_ to lecture me."

"And secondly, you know that sitting through a lecture doesn't mean you get to just behave however you want, right?"

He settled the wood in the mouth of the sheath and held out his hand for the hammer again.

Ingrid smacked it into his open palm with more force than was necessary.

"What did I do this time?" he asked. "Watch my sword."

She stepped over the naked blade with exaggerated care and sat beside him. "Nothing that you haven't already done a hundred times before."

"Then what's the problem?" He tapped the wood into the sheath, sinking it inch by satisfying inch.

"The problem is that you keep on doing it. All I ask is that you be civil, just sometimes. Sit through an entire class without making any smart remarks. Go a day without reducing a first year to tears."

"If they don't want to train, they shouldn't be in the training ground."

"Apologise to people once in a while instead of making me do it."

"No one's making you."

"I don't want to be this person, Felix. I can't keep being responsible for you."

"Then don't." He looked at her for the first time. She looked exactly as frustrated as he knew she would. "Stop being responsible for me. I never asked for it and I don't need it." The wood was almost in place. He hammered it in as far as it would go, and picked up the sandpaper again to smooth off the excess.

"As soon as you start being responsible for yourself, I'll back off gladly."

Felix ran his thumb over the sheath's mouth, checking the fit. "I am responsible for myself," he said. "Why should I change? I accept who I am."

"This isn't who you are."

"Sword."

She passed it to him hilt-first.

Moment of truth. He balanced the tip against the mouth of the sheath and pulled the sheath over the rest of the blade. Smooth and snug. "Just because you don't like who I am doesn't change the fact." He shook it gently - no rattle. He held the sheath and tipped the sword up, hand ready to catch the pommel should it slip out, but it held fast. Perfect.

Ingrid sighed. "I can't talk to you when you're like this."

Felix snorted.

"Snort all you want. One day you're going to insult the wrong person and you'll get yourself killed, and I won’t even feel bad about it."

Felix stood up and tied on his sword, trying a few experimental draws to test the sheath's hold. A smirk twitched at his lips, pleased by the results of a job well done. "If I'm ever stupid enough to die, I'll probably deserve it."

"We'll talk about this tomorrow," said Ingrid. "Try not to wreak too much havoc."

*

It was late by the time Annette was done with all the things she had to do, not helped by the library incident, and apologising for the library incident, and cleaning up after the library incident, but eventually she was free. And maybe it was a good thing, she told herself, because now all the labs were empty and she could get in a little practice on those thaumatokinetic sigils without being disturbed. Or Lysithea catching wind of it and thinking she didn’t understand the lecture. She did. She understood it all completely. She just wanted a little practice before Dorothea came to her for help. It was the responsible thing to do.

“Lines and lines go everywhere.  
Make sure the hypotenuse is the square  
Of this line here and that line there,  
And you’ll be able to move a bear!”

She wasn’t sure about the last line, but surely someone one day would need the spell to move a bear. Besides, nothing else rhymed. She measured and multiplied and divided and carried remainders, singing to herself all the while, until she joined up the last lines and felt the tingling tension in the air of a spell correctly cast. Not that the spell knew what it was supposed to be, but she’d at least put together some magic in a way that abided by the rules of reality, and probably it would do _something_. Step one: nailed.

_You’ve got this, Annie._

The lines of the sigil glowed a soft gold, absorbing energy from their surroundings. According to Professor Hanneman, all she had to do was wait until enough energy had been amassed, and then point it in the right direction, and poof! Basically teleportation!

Except not. He had been very clear on that. _Do not use on people or animals. At most use it on houseplants, but only houseplants you aren’t very attached to._

“Now if we want to move some stuff  
We wait! An hour should be enough.  
So now we wait until it’s ripe,  
Or we’ll have problems of… some type!”

Those last lines were just not coming today. Oh well. There’d be time later. And maybe her song would help Dorothea remember how it all worked. Dorothea might even do her the great honour of singing it for her, _operatically_.

Wait. Hold up. Why stop there? She could write an _opera_ about _doing magic_. She should write these ideas down while they were fresh. And it would give her something to do while the sigil matured so she wasn’t just wasting time.

She turned over one of her practice sigils and started to write. Annette didn’t know much about opera, but she figured that as long as she had a plot and some good songs Dorothea would be able to fill in the gaps. She could even discuss it with Mercie at the market tomorrow. Mercie had grown up in Enbarr, after all. She might have been to the opera.

First things first, she thought, she’d need a main character.

What felt like only five minutes later, Annette had used up all of her spare paper. She set her notes on top of her sigil, which blazed fiercely even through the pile, and hunted for more on the other empty desks. Someone must have left _something_ , or else she was going to lose this chorus, and she’d finally got it perfect. She got down on her hands and knees, singing the lines over and over so she wouldn’t forget them, pushing chairs aside and bumping into table legs.

Something interrupted her song. A voice.

She fell silent. She probably wasn’t supposed to be here. Definitely nobody was supposed to be here listening to her sing.

A scraping footstep against the floor. She thought she could see movement but it was dark under here, and she could have been imagining things. She slid backwards as quietly as possible, which would have been more quiet had she not banged into the table leg and sent papers and quills and books tumbling to the floor.

The footsteps started up again, faster. Running. Closer.

Annette lifted her hands and blasted the first spell that came to mind. The lab lit up. _Wow_ , she thought as the world was swallowed in light. _I’m stronger than I thought._

*

Felix stirred and tried to blink the red shadow of the explosion from his eyes. He was on his back, under a table. He must have been thrown pretty far. Still, he felt fine enough, so he felt around and got out into the open again and pulled himself upright, feeling oddly light and off-balance.

_That's the last time I ever do anything nice._

He'd followed the unmistakeable sound of Annette’s singing to the labs, and she hadn't answered him, and then it had sounded as though she'd fallen, and he'd come rushing in, and then something had exploded.

That, of course, meant Annette was still somewhere in the room, so he sighed and started picking his way through the dimly lit rows of desks. Odd that the candles were still lit, but magical explosions were beyond the realm of Felix's experience and he didn't pay it any mind beyond being glad for the light. There was no sign of Annette further in the lab.

Just as he began to wonder if he should worry, a low groan from behind turned his head, and Felix came face to face with himself.

It could have been a mirror, two Felixes equally horrified at the sight of the other, except the other him said, “This was not supposed to happen. This was not supposed to happen _at all_.”

“What’s going on?” Felix demanded, his voice higher than usual. He coughed. “I mean what’s-?” He coughed again. Something was wrong with his voice. He shook his head. Caught a glimpse of red hair out of the corner of his eye. Reached up very slowly and took hold of a coiled loop of hair. Tugged. Looked down, even more slowly.

“ _No_ ,” he said in Annette’s voice, taking hold of Annette’s skirt with Annette’s hand.

Annette stared at him pleadingly out of his own eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she said, words that his voice had probably never formed in his life. “I will totally fix this.”

“Stop doing weird things to my face,” he whispered.

“Oh no, I’m sorry!”

“I said stop it!”

“What should I do?”

“Just be normal!”

“I don’t know what normal is!”

“ _That much is obvious._ ”

“Look,” she said, “I have a lot of experience with stuff like this.”

Felix made a strangled sound.

“And like ninety nine times out of a hundred, magical stuff just wears off on its own.”

“When?”

Annette gestured wildly and knocked over a cauldron stand. “I don’t know!”

“And be careful with that!” he snapped. "That's my body and I want it back!"

She rubbed her - Felix’s - knuckles. “My advice is just to go to bed like normal, and in the morning probably everything will be fine. The thing to remember is that magic is like water in that it always takes the path of least resistance towards entropy, which is why spells can’t stand indefinitely without regular maintenance, so-”

“What if it doesn’t?” He couldn’t stop watching himself fidget and dither and refuse to stand still for more than five seconds, every one of Annette’s thoughts written clear on his face. It was hypnotic. Grotesque, even. And better than trying to work out what to look at on the body _he_ was occupying.

Annette blinked in innocent confusion and Felix shuddered. “Sorry?”

“I said, what if it doesn’t wear off? What if we wake up in the morning still... like this?”

“Then we’ll meet up tomorrow and plan our next steps.”

_I don’t sound like that. Do I sound like that?_

“But we’ll definitely be back in our own bodies in the morning.”

“And if we aren’t,” said Felix, trying not to imagine how he must look, trying to stare himself out from Annette’s body, “come find me in my room. Discreetly.”

“Oh,” she said, “um, actually it’s probably easier to sleep in each other’s rooms.”

“...What?”

“So our bodies wake up in the right places!”

Felix wasn’t sure which was worse - Annette alone in his body and his bedroom, or him alone in hers. But she was right. It would not look great if Annette was seen creeping from his dorm room in the morning. And if she did, Sylvain would know. He had a sixth sense for that kind of thing. “Where’s your room?” he asked at last.

“Fourth from the greenhouse, ground floor. Yours?”

“First floor, third from the end. Next to the boar’s.”

Annette hissed through her teeth.

“What?” he asked.

She squirmed. Felix wanted to claw his own skin off at the sight of himself, _squirming_. “Could you…?”

He folded his arms and immediately unfolded them again at the unfamiliar shape of Annette’s chest. “What?” he asked again.

“Could you… maybe not call His Highness a boar when you’re in my body? Please?”

Felix pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine. I suppose it’s not very believable coming from you anyway.”

“I mean, that’s not really the point…”

“You should probably pick up the habit though. Or people will start asking questions.”

“I don’t think that’s really necessary,” said Annette, shifting from foot to foot. She knocked his sword against a table.

Felix clenched his hands into fists but otherwise maintained his calm. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. “The faster we get this night over and done with, the better.”


	2. The Morning After The Night Before

When Annette awoke, it was still dark. She reached for the cup of water she kept beside the bed, but everything was closer than it usually seemed to be, and she only succeeded in smacking her hand against something hard. “Ow!”

Not her voice.

Oh, now she remembered.

_Guess it hasn’t worn off yet. Poor Felix._

She rolled over and pulled the pillow over her head. It didn’t smell of her. Instead it- no. Too weird. Nope nope nope. She sat up. What time was it? She wasn’t tired at all. The clock tower wasn’t visible from Felix’s window, so she decided to get a good head start on the day and get dressed while she waited to hear the chimes. She’d have to creep down and talk to Felix anyway, and knowing Felix he’d be climbing the walls waiting for her. Plus she wanted to make sure her room was still in one piece.

_Don’t think mean thoughts, Annie. I’m sure he’s been very respectful of our things._

_You’re right, Annie._

_I know._

She reached to pull a little fire out of the air and light her way, a split-second before her mind remembered that it wouldn't be possible, but yelped when a spark crackled instead between her fingers. She tried again, and again a little blue arc of electricity stung her fingertips. Well, she hadn’t known he could do _that_. She wondered if he did, even. Maybe she could tell him, as a consolation for this mess.

Actually no, she thought, groping around carefully for a candle, she couldn’t tell him, ever, because then she’d be confessing that she’d been messing around with his body, even though it had definitely just been an accident, and he would probably chop her in half. Eventually she found something that felt candlelike, and considering she’d already done it and the transgression had been made, she gave herself one more little electric zap just to light the wick. It was a weird feeling, this untrained magic use. Not as easy as it should be, and though she knew what she was doing, Felix’s hands didn’t.

Felix’s room was almost bare of personal effects. She’d folded his uniform and laid it across a chair, so it would be there for him if he’d woken up here, and put his sword on the desk because it seemed safer than putting it on the floor. No mirror, either. _How does he do his hair?_ she wondered, holding it up at the back of her head experimentally. With the candle lit she could catch enough of a reflection in the darkened window, of this person who wasn’t her. She knew she shouldn’t look but she couldn’t help it. His face looked so open with someone else behind it. He didn’t look scary at all. Just a normal person. She made him blink, tilt his head. She tried out an embarrassed smile.

After a few minutes, it occurred to her that standing in Felix’s body, with no shirt on, in front of a lit window, was a terrible idea and backed further into the room to find a clean uniform, cheeks hot. She bumped into the chair, which knocked against the desk, and before she could squeak in surprise she’d spun around and caught the sword just before it fell. _Not bad, Annie._

It was not easy to dress an unfamiliar body in unfamiliar clothes while protecting the modesty of the body’s owner, but Annette was nothing if not a go-getter, and she was looking pretty good in the Academy uniform and idly plaiting Felix’s hair before the chimes rang out from a distant tower. She stopped humming to herself to count the chimes (Felix’s voice was not as musical as she was accustomed to, but she’d make do).

_Seven o’ clock in the morning? How long have I been awake?_

No time to worry about that now. Felix had been clear that they should meet early, and Annette wasn’t going to let him down.

She opened the door a little too hard, and slammed it a little too loudly. She scampered a little too quickly down the corridor - hopefully no one had heard that - and almost tripped over Felix's too-large feet down the stairs, but she made it in one piece to her own room. One of the gardeners gave her an odd look but she gave him a little wave and waited for him to carry on his way to the greenhouse before knocking on her door.

"Um, Annette?" she said, trying to sound gruff. "Are you up?"

"Yes." Felix also seemed to be trying to sound gruff, which was an interesting choice, but Annette wasn’t in much of a position to judge.

"Can I, uh, come in? To discuss our, um, homework that we had to talk about?"

"Ugh."

The door opened a crack. That was all the permission she was going to get, so she slipped in, forgetting how much bigger this body was than her own, and closed it very gently behind her.

Felix had done a passable job of getting dressed, though he hadn’t bothered with any make-up, and had obviously given up on her hair, instead tying it back in his usual bun. She resisted the urge to reach out and straighten her skirt.

“Good morning!” she said.

“Is it?” came the acerbic reply.

She tried a different angle. “Your body wakes up really early.”

“Yours doesn’t." He blinked, blearily and balefully, at her. "What have you done to my hair?”

She’d forgotten all about that. “I was bored,” she said, surreptitiously pulling a plait loose. “I’ll do it properly later.”

“As if this day wasn’t already bad enough.”

Nope, she wasn't going to let him get all pessimistic on her watch. “I know that you’re probably a little disappointed that the spell’s taking its time to wear off, but I swear it will.”

“When?” he demanded, glaring blue daggers at her.

She could be pretty scary when she was angry. “I don’t know exactly,” she admitted.

“How do we fix it without waiting for it to fix itself?” He sat awkwardly at her desk, legs pressed together, arms folded carefully.

“I don’t know that either.”

He shot her another glare.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “Don’t stress my poor body out! The first step is to work out what happened in the first place, and then we can go from there. So how about we get together this evening after dinner and we can try to make a start?”

“How about we do it now?”

She blinked.

He frowned.

“We have class today,” she said.

“Then we’ll tell everyone,” he said through his teeth, “that we’re sick.”

“But we _aren’t_ sick,” said Annette. “We can’t skip class, Felix.”

He buried his head in his hands. “Then you go.”

“But it’ll look like I’m not there,” she pointed out.

“It won’t matter,” he said, “because you will be there.”

“But it’ll _look_ like I’m _not_." What about this was he not getting? "And I have a lot to do today! I can’t disappoint people.”

“Why can’t you just tell the professor what happened?” he asked, shoulders hunched.

Her mouth fell open. “Felix, no, I can’t! And you can’t either! They’ll kick me out of the Academy if they know I’ve been messing around with this stuff, so please don’t tell! They’ll at least ban me from the labs.” And if Lysithea ever heard about it she’d never live it down. Not that Lysithea would be mean about it or anything, but she was so good at everything, and so intimidating. Lysithea wouldn’t need to do anything, because Annette would die of mortification all on her own. “Please can we just go to class and pretend everything’s normal?” she begged.

He recoiled from her most puppydog eyes.

“Just for one day?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“And I promise we’ll fix it tonight?”

He groaned loudly.

“Please?”

“Fine, okay, fine, just stop looking at me like that!”

“Yay!”

“And stop that!”

“Felix, you’re the best!”

His hand found the letter opener on her desk, and he gripped it like it was a dagger. “You can’t… I can’t believe I’m saying this. You can’t call me that if we’re going to do this.”

“Oh! Right!” She grinned slyly. “You’re the best, _Annette_.” And she winked.

Felix said nothing, but his knuckles whitened around the letter opener.

One day of pretending to be Felix. She could do this. She could work with this. She’d be the best Felix she could be. “Do you want me to do your hair?” she asked.

His hands went to the back of his head defensively. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing!”

He narrowed his eyes.

Time to tread carefully. “It just makes me look a little… severe, that’s all.”

“Do you think I look severe?” he asked.

She folded immediately. “Nooo! It looks nice on you! It just-”

“You think I look _nice_?” He sounded offended.

_Come on, Annie, you can do this._ “You know what I mean,” she said, “it looks… very you.”

“What’s wrong with-?”

“And people will ask questions if I look different, and we don’t want them to ask questions!”

She’d never heard herself make that half-groan half-growl Felix made that passed for agreement in her own voice, but she figured she may as well get used to it because it was the kind of sound Felix made a lot. “Okay,” she said, “turn around and I’ll-”

He retreated from her hands. “Just tell me how to do it.”

“It’ll be faster if I just-”

“ _With your words._ ” He slipped out of the chair and around it with more grace than Annette would have thought herself capable of.

“How about I show you, then?” she asked, untying her own hair. Felix’s hair. Whichever. She ran her hands through it, ready to give him the best demonstration she’d ever given.

“No! Not on me! Put it back up!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“Okay.” She was a little hurt at his vehemence. “You should wear your hair down more often. It looks nice.”

“I don’t care!”

_Huh, I look pretty cute when I blush._ Annette was aware of his eyes on her as she tied his hair back up, judging her. She didn’t know why. She was pretty good at hair, actually. “Okay, let’s do this. Hair in two bits, over your shoulders to keep them straight. Take one.” She mimed it with her hands, which she saw him bristling at but ignored. “Split that into three even strands. More even than that. Okay, good.”

Felix’s face - her face - was still fiercely red as he dragged his fingers through her hair.

“Ready?”

He nodded slightly.

“Now take one of the strands and move it into the middle. Don’t let go of the other two! Now take the one on the other side and move that into the middle. Keep repeating that till you get to about, hmm, here? And then comes the tricky part, because you have to tie it off and then-”

“Hang on.” Felix was already in a tangle. “I can’t hold all the bits.”

“Just take it in your fingers.”

“I’m trying.”

“If I could show you it would be much easier.”

“Just explain it better.”

“Should I help?”

“No!”

“Well, I don’t know what you want!”

“To be back in my own body!”

“Well,” said Annette, trying to keep her own temper cool, “you can’t _have_ that right now, so just let me help and then we can get on with the day and see if we can reverse this, okay?”

“Don’t patronise me,” Felix snapped.

There was a knock at the door. “Annie?” asked Mercedes from outside. Time for breakfast, Annette realised. The morning was getting away from them.

“Yes?” Annette replied, before remembering that she was supposed to be Felix right now. She coughed to cover it up, and gestured wildly at Felix.

Felix sighed. “Yes?” he called.

“Yes, _Mercie_ ,” Annette hissed at him.

He frowned.

She frowned back.

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mercie?”

“Is everything all right in there?”

Felix looked at Annette. Annette nodded. “It’s fine.”

“Is someone else in there?”

Felix raised his eyebrows.

Annette looked around, but there was nowhere she could realistically hide. She nodded, resigned.

“Yes,” said Felix.

“Anyone we know?”

Annette urged him on. Maybe, she thought, the problem wasn’t going to be her this time.

“Felix,” said Felix, his eyes narrowed at her.

“Oh, good morning, Felix!”

“Good morning!” trilled Annette.

“My, you’re certainly in a good mood today.”

"Annette's a good teacher," chirped Annette. "We were just talking homework."

_What?_ mouthed Felix.

Annette shrugged.

"I hope you don't mind if I steal her away from you to go to breakfast."

"Oh, sure. Go ahead."

_What are you doing?_ Felix mouthed, even more furious.

"Can I come in?" Mercedes asked.

Felix's eyes widened.

"Oh!" whispered Annette. She looked around frantically. "In a minute?"

"In a minute!"

"Okay!"

Annette spoke quickly. There was no time left. Moment of truth. She was almost disappointed she wasn't going to get her chance to perform yet. "Um, do my hair however you want. If anyone asks, say you're trying out a new look."

He didn't look very reassured. "What do I talk about?"

"Oh, anything. Normal things. You'll be fine, it's only Mercie. Do you have anything to do today that I should know about?"

"Training this morning, which you've missed already. Training after class. Try not to damage my body before I get it back."

"Should I polish your swords?"

"Don't even think about it."

She didn't bother waiting for him to ask about her obligations. "Let me find my schedule for you."

"Your what?"

Annette was already digging in her drawers, and pulled out her planner, fat with scraps of paper and notes. It was lighter than she remembered it being. "Here," she said, and dropped it in Felix's lap.

"Ow."

"That should have everything in it. Well. Not everything, but if you miss anything just say you forgot and people will understand. They generally do."

"I can't believe you're doing this to me," Felix hissed.

"Have fun with Mercie!" sang Annette, at the door. "Enjoy her baking! See you after class, byeee!"

She opened the door to Mercedes, who watched her go with undisguised interest. She'd have a lot to explain later, but that was Felix's problem now.

*

There was no time to shut the door behind Annette and win a few more seconds to gather his thoughts. Not that he had any idea what he'd have thought about. Perhaps it was a mercy to be faced with Mercedes' beatific smile, stunned like a deer in the hunt before the killing blow.

"Good morning, Annie," she said, basket over her arm. "Is everything all right today?"

"Why wouldn't it be?" retorted Felix.

Mercedes raised her eyebrows very slightly. "No reason, Annie, I was just wondering."

Maybe a little too defensive. "Well, everything's fine, anyway. I just slept too late." She was still looking at him curiously, and he fumbled for the right words to make her stop. What would Annette say? "I got up on the… wrong side of the bed. I guess."

"Your hair is-"

"I'm trying out a new look," said Felix.

He was making it worse. She was staring at him even more curiously. "It looks nice."

Felix waited what he hoped was a normal amount of time before saying a guarded, "Thank you."

"Well, shall we?"

Felix nodded.

Mercedes held out her arm, and after a few seconds Felix realised in dismay what she wanted and awkwardly hooked his arm - _Annette's arm, think of it as Annette's arm_ \- around hers.

"Busy day today?" Mercedes asked on the way to the dining hall.

Why did she _know_ everything? Again he fought the cold sting of dread. "What makes you say that?"

"Your planner," said Mercedes blithely. "When the planner comes out I know you've bitten off more than you can chew."

"I can chew just fine," muttered Felix.

Mercedes laughed. "I'm sure you're right. I just get exhausted watching you."

Felix didn't know what to say to that, and though he suspected Annette would have happily prattled on about whatever came into her head, or sung a song about a monster in the fishpond or some such nonsense, he couldn't think of anything inane enough to say. So he said nothing, merely walked awkwardly beside Mercedes, trying to match his steps to hers. Annette's legs were just so short, and the balance was all wrong, and if he thought about it too long he started to feel claustrophobic.

The dining hall was lively at this hour, long after Felix would ordinarily have eaten. More reason to wake up early. Avoid all this. Have some quiet.

Mercedes sat down and Felix sat across from her, waiting with some trepidation as she set the basket on the table and uncovered it. "So," she said. "What's on the agenda today?"

"Let's find out," said Felix, and opened the book.

It took a while for him to decipher Annette's handwriting, and find the right page, and then it seemed to be half in some kind of code.

"A lot," he said eventually.

"Will you still have time to come to the market today? And study?"

Felix had no idea. The page was covered in crossings out and abbreviations and little lines of writing inserted between others. But judging by this mess Annette would probably say yes, so he said, "Yes," and tried not to sound uncertain.

"I'm glad," said Mercedes with a smile. "You seem a little down today, if you don't mind me saying."

"I'm fine."

"Have some breakfast. Here, I made apricot turnovers just for you."

_No. No no no._ He eyed the pastry Mercedes offered him warily.

"I thought you deserved a treat after what happened in the library yesterday."

"Thank you," he managed, with no idea what she was talking about. He took the turnover gingerly, and thought about all of the things Annette would owe him for making him do this instead of the unholy sweetness of the thing. The turnover remained, taunting him. Well, he was Felix of House Fraldarius. He had charged fearlessly into battle. He had thrown himself into danger and emerged victorious with his life, by skill and cunning alone. He would not be defeated by a breakfast pastry.

He took a bite.

It… wasn't so bad, in Annette's body. Which somehow made it worse. _It'll be over soon_ , he thought.

The chimes rang for eight o' clock.


	3. Sword and Flower

Annette was being the best Felix she could be. Possibly, and she didn’t say this lightly, an even better Felix than the real thing. She had behaved impeccably during the morning’s classes, sitting in Felix’s usual place at the back of the room even though that made it harder to hear anything. No wonder he was never paying attention. But Annette wasn’t about to let any silver lining slip through her new, larger fingers. She used the opportunity to catch up on a bit of sneaky reading instead. She didn’t manage to find anything useful about switching bodies, but no matter. Eliminating what _wasn’t_ the case was just as important as figuring out what was. That was one of the fundamentals of magic theory.

She ran Felix’s fingers restlessly over the calluses on his palms as Professor Byleth wound down the lecture, ready to face the rest of the day. She got up with the chimes, full of energy. She’d have the rest of the day to study up on body switching with no prior commitments to wriggle out of, and-

“Where are you going? Felix?”

It took a second for Annette to realise the words were directed at her. She wasn’t used to the name yet. _Rookie mistake, Annie_. She looked up at the professor, hugging her books to herself before realising how weird it felt against Felix’s… somewhat different topography. “Sorry,” she said. “I was just-”

“Sword practice,” said Professor Byleth. “See you in the training ground.”

“O-okay! See you there!”

Annette stood frozen in the classroom as the others filed out. Of course her schedule was different now. No magic classes. Sword classes. Which were now.

For some reason Ingrid was giving her a stern look even though she hadn’t done anything.

She caught Felix’s eye as he left, arm in arm with Mercie and looking only slightly murderous, and gave him a reassuring smile to tell him she would handle whatever was thrown at her. He gave her that look back, the one that was like yelling but with his eyes. Well. Her eyes.

No time to worry about that now. She had a reputation to maintain.

Annette didn’t spend much time in the training ground. She was, at heart, a more theoretical kind of girl. Still, it was a chance to learn something new, and she wasn’t going to turn her nose up at it. There were at least not many other people here today, just a couple of other students running through forms, someone considering the training bows hung on the wall. Professor Byleth stood in the centre of the training ground.

“Are you ready?”

Annette bounded up to the professor, suddenly nervous. _Best Felix you can be, remember_. “What are we doing today?” she asked, careful not to sound too excited.

"Warm up, and then we'll get back to the manoeuvre that was giving you trouble last week."

A manoeuvre that was giving Felix trouble? Then Annette had no chance.

_Oh but what if I get it right? Imagine how impressed he'd be!_

"Got it!" she said.

Professor Byleth nodded, with the same look of puzzlement Felix seemed to be greeted by wherever he went, if Annette's experience was anything to go by. She copied the professor's movements carefully, not wanting to leave Felix any pulled muscles for when they switched back.

"Are you all right?" Professor Byleth asked eventually.

"Of course."

"That's not your usual warm-up."

"Oh! I, um." _Think, Annie_. "I just thought I'd try something new. It always pays to have a wide repertoire of techniques." _Okay. I think we got away with it._

Professor Byleth nodded slowly. “Did you bring the training swords?”

“Oh! I’ll get them!”

Professor Byleth was frowning suspiciously.

Annette decided it would not be prudent to ask where the swords were.

“Felix.”

“Yes?” _Recognising your own name, nice job, Annie._

Professor Byleth pointed over her shoulder. “That way.”

“I knew that! I was just going at them from a different angle! For stealth!” _Should I sound angrier?_ she wondered. _No. I don’t want to get him in trouble._

The student who had been considering the bows was now dithering over the sword racks. Annette waited for him to be done, racking her brains to remember if she’d ever held a sword in her life and if not, how hard could it be. The student turned, saw her, let out a very small squeak.

“F-Felix! I didn’t see you there!”

“Hi!” Aw, he does have friends! I hope I don’t have to know his name, though.

The student ducked out of the way. “Please, go ahead.”

“Oh, I can wait.”

“No! I insist.”

“That’s kind of you,” said Annette, picking a couple of training swords out of the rack. Did it matter which she took? Probably not, right? Just look confident, and nobody would ask questions.

“Th-thank you!” called the student as she made her way back to the professor. _I didn’t think Felix would associate with anyone so polite,_ thought Annette.

She had hoped that Felix’s body would know what to do with a sword on its own, but unfortunately she seemed to be required to provide some sort of input. She let Professor Byleth take the lead, as they warmed up, and at least the training swords weren’t heavy or anything. The opposite, in fact - more than once, trying to follow the professor’s instructions to loosen her grip and relax, she ended up flinging the sword in a high, spinning arc across the training ground.

“Oops!” she said, as it went soaring off again.

“Take it seriously.”

Annette almost explained that she was having an off day, but at the last second realised this would be out of character. “Sorry,” she said instead.

“Shall we start on that move?” Professor Byleth asked. “Remember the stance is angled differently to the styles you’re used to.”

“Okay!” said Annette. She held the sword in what she hoped was the right way, at what she hoped was the right angle. The professor walked around her, and gave her legs a prod with her own training sword until Annette moved her feet. Another jab to the back of one knee and she bent her leg. A clack at the tip of her training sword to lower it.

Annette felt her cheeks redden at a tap on her lower back. She straightened up.

“Shoulders down.”

She lowered her shoulders.

“Don’t hunch.”

She tried to stand broader and waited for the next command.

Professor Byleth gave a little gesture with her hands: go on, then.

Annette took a deep breath and tightened her hands on the smooth wooden hilt. _Okay. I can do this._

“Don’t adjust your grip.”

 _No I can’t no I can’t no I can’t._ “Oh, um, Professor,” said Annette, “would you actually mind running through it with me again?”

“Haven’t you been practising?”

 _Back up, back up, Annie!_ “Of course! I just don’t think I’ve got it quite down yet, and I didn’t want to get into bad habits by practising it wrong, so I was hoping that you could just give me another demonstration first.” This kind of thing was foolproof when it came to Professor Byleth - Annette was a master at evoking sympathy and compassion from the Academy staff.

“Show me what you’ve got,” said Professor Byleth flatly.

“Oh, um, really? It’s just I think it would really help to-”

“Felix.”

“Okay!” whispered Annette obediently. _Here goes nothing_. She tried to think swordfighting thoughts, lifted the training sword, and did her best.

When she was done, she looked hopefully at Professor Byleth, who eventually shut her mouth again.

“I’ll run through it again for you, shall I?” she said at last.

*

Felix tried again to decipher Annette’s handwriting in her planner. He’d gone from _Not doing any of that_ to a begrudging _I’ll do the ones I can read. Maybe. If I have time._

He didn’t seem to have _much_ time, what with everyone who walked past him stopping to ask if he could do them this or that favour. He marched into the greenhouse, which was the one word on its line that he could read, and cornered the greenhouse keeper, who greeted him with a smile.

“Hi there, Annette! What-”

“I have something to do in here but I’ve forgotten what it is. Is there something I should do?”

“Aren’t you eager today! Let me see, the Duscur boy was in deadheading the verona, Professor Manuela came in too, but she was just checking on the growth of the red weaveroot.” The greenhouse keeper thought some more, and Felix bit his tongue to keep from telling her to think faster. “I can’t think of anything in particular. But if you want to do some watering then I’d be grateful!”

“Fine.”

He was mildly furious to note how heavy the full watering can was to Annette’s scrawny arms, but dutifully hoisted it over, splashing his feet and bumping it heavily against his thigh with every step. Well, she’d just have to deal with it if she ended up with bruises, he thought. She was the one who insisted on thrusting her to-do list at him.

He nursed his bad mood as he watered the seedlings and the herb pots and the Albinean flowerbeds, and had worked himself up so much that when there was a tap at his shoulder he almost turned fist-first.

“Yes?” he asked between his teeth, faced with Hilda.

“Sorry, was I interrupting?” she asked sweetly. It had been a long time since he’d had to deal with her. She’d learned quickly that she’d get nothing out of him. Not much of a surprise that she came sniffing round Annette and her soft heart.

“Of course not,” said Felix flatly.

“Good! See, I was just wondering where you were, because you said you’d cover for my kitchen shift today but nobody in the kitchen had seen you. I was worried that you might have got lost or forgotten or something.”

“I changed my mind,” said Felix. “I’m busy.”

Hilda seemed taken aback, but only for a moment. “Oh, it’s just that I was _really_ counting on you.”

“You’ll have to count on someone else today.” He turned back to the flowers.

“Oh. Okay.”

Her disappointment rolled right off him. He watered some berry stems almost ripe for picking.

“Your hair looks different today,” she said.

He tensed, and the watering can swung back, the flow of water halted. “I’m trying something new.”

“I see. Well, if you ever want any advice,” she said, and he could have sworn she sounded a little satisfied, “you know where to find me.”

"Yep," he said, and kept on watering until she was gone.

Annette would doubtless complain and look sad at him when she heard about it, but she'd thank him later when it kept Hilda off her back.

The greenhouse grew quieter as the sun sank lower in the sky, and the humid air seemed to grow heavier. It would surely be time to meet back up with Annette soon and find out how to end this ridiculous situation.

"Oh, hey, Annette!"

Felix's eyes opened wide. _Oh no. Not today._

Sylvain leaned over his shoulder and into view. "Whatcha doing in the greenhouse all alone?"

"Watering the plants," said Felix.

"You always work so hard. You should take a night off once in a while."

"Maybe later," said Felix, trying desperately to remember all of Sylvain's inane stories of how girls dumped him so he could recreate one.

This was patently not the way. Sylvain just looked more enthusiastic. "Dinner later, you say?"

 _Evasive manoeuvres._ "I'm spending the evening with… with Mercie."

This was even worse, judging by the grin on Sylvain's face. "Hey, she can come! I'd be doubly honoured to take double the lovely ladies out to dinner."

"Absolutely not," said Felix.

Sylvain only laughed. "I was just kidding. Dates are better one on one. I get it."

"You do not get it," said Felix dangerously. It sounded absurd in Annette's voice. He didn't want to know how he looked.

Sylvain looked thoroughly comfortable. He ran a hand through his hair, and lowered his voice in a way that Felix realised was meant to be seductive. "I'm glad I found you here, you know. Like a rare flower blooming among her lesser sisters. It's not easy to get you alone," he continued blithely. "You're always running around on errands, or with Mercedes. And whenever you have greenhouse duty Felix always comes creeping around to listen to you sing."

Felix found himself utterly bereft of words.

Sylvain put a hand to his mouth in mock-regret. "Oh, you didn't know? Oof. He doesn't know I know, so don't say anything. He'd die if he could hear this."

Felix knew it. "Maybe he just appreciates good music," he said, voice strained.

Sylvain's stupid face lit up again.

_I've made it worse. I've ruined everything. I am in hell._

"Oh Annette, I didn't realise it was… I won't say a _word_ , I promise."

"You'd… better not," said Felix, completely at a loss. Denying it would only dig the hole even deeper. Annette would have to solve this one on her own.

"Of _course_ , beautiful, I would never." Sylvain crossed his heart with exaggerated seriousness. "And hey, if he turns out to be little too feral for you, my door is always-"

Felix decked him in one hit.

It wasn't a good hit, and Annette's hand hurt something fierce, but Sylvain had not been expecting it, and was rolling on the floor with his hands over his face.

"Annie!"

Felix looked up from his handiwork to see Mercedes in the greenhouse doorway.

"I came to see if you were free to go shopping, but…?"

"Shopping sounds great," he said, stepping over Sylvain's prone form and straightening his skirt. "Let's go."

*

"Wait, she what? In the _face_?"

"That's what I heard."

"I mean if anyone had it coming…"

"Right? But Annette?"

"Crazy…"

Annette glanced up from her book at the sound of her name, startled out of her reading. "What's this about Annette?" she asked.

The giggling students quieted immediately. "Oh, um, nothing," said one.

"I was just curious," said Annette, a little crestfallen. Being Felix was _lonely_.

"We should be going," said the other, nudging her friend, and they scurried off.

And speaking of Felix, it sounded like he'd been up to something. Hopefully nothing bad.

But that was for later. She was onto something here. There wasn't much in the library on how to swap bodies with someone, but there was a rich seam of theory here on how similar things could be achieved. And if the principle was the same, then there was a solution, and she was so close to it, but she couldn't get Felix's brain to work right and put the pieces together.

There was a way to bring these ingredients together, she knew it.

"Found you."

She didn’t realise that the words were directed at her until someone blocked her light, and she looked up to see Ingrid standing over her.

“Well,” said Ingrid. “I have to give you credit for hiding in the one place I never thought I’d find you.”

“You know me,” said Annette cheerfully. “Full of surprises. What can I do for you?”

“Don’t play dumb with me,” said Ingrid, more quietly, sitting across the table from her. “I told you I wasn’t going to let it go.”

“This is about the… thing… that I did?” asked Annette, mind working fast.

“If you’re not even going to take this seriously then-”

“No, I am! I am!” Annette grabbed Ingrid’s sleeve, and only realised when Ingrid stared, slightly mortified, at her, how this must look. She let go quickly. “I’m sorry, okay? I’ve had a pretty rough day is all. You go ahead, I’ll be quiet and listen.”

“What is there to talk about?” asked Ingrid, annoyed. “Just, behave yourself. I’m done covering for you and making excuses, and you can stop with your ‘no one’s making you’ because people come find me and complain to me about you. _You_ are making me do this.”

“I’m sorry,” said Annette. “That sounds like it must be difficult for you.”

This didn’t seem to be making it any better.

“What is wrong with you today?” snapped Ingrid. “The least you could do is pretend to care instead of being so sarcastic. I have things of my own that I want to do while I’m here. I didn’t just enroll in the Academy to keep you out of trouble.”

“Of course you didn’t, and I’d never expect that!” said Annette, alarmed. “I won’t do it again, I promise.” She saw a familiar figure by the bookshelves - an odd sensation, like seeing herself in the reflection of a window or the corner of a mirror, but a reflection that behaved independently. “Oh, look, Annette’s coming over,” she said, looking meaningfully at Felix skulking by the wall in her body. “Good evening, Annette!”

Felix raised his eyebrows and backed further into the shadows, pretending he hadn’t seen them.

“Oh, great,” said Ingrid, “have you been terrorising poor Annette, too?”

“No!”

“Annette, come here,” called Ingrid, provoking other students in the library to shush her. Ingrid ignored them. “Annette!”

Felix realised that there was nowhere to run, and joined them reluctantly.

“What did you do this time?” Ingrid asked Annette.

“Nothing!”

Ingrid rolled her eyes. “I despair of you.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“Annette,” said Ingrid, “has he been bothering you?”

Felix flushed bright red. “No,” he muttered.

“It’s okay, I’ll make sure he won’t do it again.” Ingrid cuffed Annette on the shoulder. “This _one last time_. Got it?”

“I didn’t-!”

“Just apologise so we can all move on,” growled Ingrid.

“Okay! I’m… sorry, Annette, for… what I did.”

“It’s forgiven,” said Felix quickly.

“There,” said Ingrid. “Was that so hard?”

“Not at all,” said Annette.

“Good.” She got up. “I have stuff to do. Please don’t go around savaging people while I’m gone.”

“I won’t.”

“And Annette.”

Felix looked up anxiously.

“I’ve changed my mind. Do you have any time tomorrow to meet up and… you know?”

“Uh…”

Annette nodded surreptitiously.

“Yes?” said Felix.

“Good! I’ll see you then. Tell me if this one gives you any more trouble.” She gave Annette another cuff that seemed a little too hard to be playful as a parting shot.

“What was that all about?” asked Felix, watching her leave.

Annette gaped at him. “You tell me! She was so mad at you! What did you do?”

Felix rolled his eyes. “Oh, that. She’s always that way.”

“Not to me!”

“It’s not important,” said Felix. “I want to know what you made me agree to.”

It was Annette’s turn to hedge. “Oh. That.”

“Yes,” said Felix. “ _That_.”

“Well,” said Annette, “you have to understand that we’ve been working on this for a long time.”

“Who’s ‘we’? No, don’t tell me. You and Mercedes.”

“Right! So Ingrid’s been kind of interested in, you know, make-up and fashion for a while…” How to delicately put the fact that it must be pretty hard to grow up female with only Felix and Sylvain for company until she came to the Academy? The easiest way seemed not to mention it at all, especially given the disbelieving look on Felix’s face. “But she’s a little intimidated by it all, so we’ve been trying to encourage her to try it out in a safe environment.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this from my own mouth,” muttered Felix. “And I couldn’t tell her tomorrow wasn’t a good time why, exactly?”

“Because I’m not going to jeopardise poor Ingrid’s self-confidence over a little thing like this! If you’d said no then she might have thought you were trying to avoid her!”

“I could have let her down gently!” Felix hissed.

“No you couldn’t!” Annette hissed back. Felix’s voice was good for that. “I’m sorry but you just aren’t very approachable!”

Felix folded his arms. He seemed to have got the hang of doing it without startling himself, at least. “You’d better hope that this has worn off by tomorrow.”

“It will have,” Annette promised. “But if it hasn’t-”

Felix groaned.

“-I have a plan.”

“Finally. Let’s get started.”

“Don’t get mad,” she said, which served only to make him visibly more annoyed, “but we can’t do it tonight.”

“Why?” he asked, like a kitten that thought it was a tiger. Or a tiger that found it was suddenly a kitten.

“Because it needs some preparation. I’m sorry! I think I’ve figured out most of the answer, and if I’m right, it’s not going to be easy. The timing will need to be super precise or we might end up sharing a single body, or even floating around without a body at all, and I don’t know how long a soul or a consciousness or whatever we are can maintain its integrity out of a body or what would happen to the body itself, but it probably wouldn’t be good.”

“Get to the point.”

“Oh! Yes. The point is, magic sometimes needs a little symbolism to kind of focus a spell. That’s actually how you start learning, and it’s a useful trick for anything unfamiliar or complicated, and this is both, so-”

“The _point_.”

“We need a metal called Morfis bronze and a herb called red weaveroot,” said Annette, the tangents startled out of her.

Felix considered this, then sighed. “Explain,” he said. “Succinctly.”

“We need to show the magic what we need it to do, see? So we need something to symbolise dividing and something to symbolise joining together. And it should be these things in particular because-”

“I’ve heard of Morfis bronze. Jeritza has a pair of knives forged from it. Will they do?”

Annette blinked. “That sounds perfect, actually. Would he let us borrow them?”

Felix gave her a grim smile which didn’t suit Annette’s face. “Me, maybe. And he’d probably demand I best him in single combat first.”

“Uh, when you say ‘me’, meaning you, what you actually mean is…?”

Felix nodded.

“Oh,” said Annette.

“And the other thing?”

“I can take care of that,” she said, rallying. “It’s a kind of herb, and it grows-”

“There’s some in the greenhouse. Anything else?”

She deflated. “No, that’s it.” _I guess he doesn’t need us at all, Annie. I just wanted to be useful for once._

She waited for Felix to leave, but he just kept sitting there looking at her, and she kept on waiting until eventually he sighed and said, “Out with it. What’s wrong now?”

“Nothing.”

“Try again. You’ll find my body isn’t a good liar.”

She fiddled with her shirt cuffs. “It’s stupid.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I just…” _Keep it together, Annie_. “I just thought I’d be able to solve it myself.”

“What does it matter who does what as long as we get out of this?” he asked. “We’ll meet in the morning to discuss our next move.”

Annette nodded.

“And get some training in. I don’t want to get lazy.”

“Okay.” Great. Back out on the training ground. At least nobody would be laughing at _her_. And speaking of ruining each other’s reputations… “Felix?”

“What?”

“You haven’t been getting me in trouble, have you?”

He looked annoyed at the mere thought of it. “No.”

“Okay, good. It’s just I heard some people talking about me maybe doing something? Maybe something… crazy?”

Felix stood up and brushed dust from his shoulder. “They’re probably talking about how I hit Sylvain in the greenhouse.”

Not what she had been expecting. “You…”

“You’re welcome, by the way.”

“I didn’t thank you!”

“He needs to learn how to talk to people.” Felix picked up Annette’s planner.

“Fe- Annette! You can’t do that! It’s Sylvain, that’s just how he is!”

Felix gave her a long look. “Do you think so? Talk to him from my body and see how he is then. See you in the morning.”

“Oh, Annie,” she whispered to herself once he was gone. “You are going to have to make a lot of apologies when this is over.”


	4. Dawn of the Second Day

Felix knew as soon as he woke up the next morning that yet again the magical idiocy in which he found himself had not worn off on its own. He could tell by the quality of the light filtering into the room how late it was. Annette had better be in the training ground.

He rolled over, trying not to think too hard about everything, about himself somewhere getting on without him, about him stuck here where everything was wrong, and this body wasn’t his and people kept _expecting_ things of it. And the clumsiness. He was constantly trying not to trip over Annette’s tiny feet and forever knocking things over with her bird-light hands.

The tower bells tolled the hour and reminded Felix of the next horror that awaited him. It was too late to get dressed in the dark now. He rifled through Annette’s drawers, hating himself and her and all the people who had designed the Academy uniform for female students.

Undergarments on as fast as possible. He’d tried doing it with his eyes closed, but then he had to feel his way around and that made him hate everything even more, so he opted for speed instead. Think mechanically. It’s just a body.

Once the undergarments were on (the right way around and everything fastened correctly, which added to the generally required time significantly) the rest was a lot easier. He knew shirts and jackets and could improvise skirts well enough. And he made sure he was well turned out, because this was just taking care of a valuable possession of Annette’s, and though he didn’t seem the type, he was actually pretty good at taking care of valuable things. It almost helped that he could stand in front of the mirror and straighten the seams and smooth out the creases until the Annette he saw reflected there looked passable. A lot more done with everything than the real Annette had ever looked, but still. Passable.

He made an attempt at the plaits but not really a serious one, giving up quickly and tying Annette’s hair back and out of the way where hair belonged. He didn’t see what she’d been complaining about. She looked fine. Give him a little more time at this (please, Seiros, don’t) and he’d be a better Annette than Annette herself.

And as if summoned by his thoughts, there was a timid knock at the door. He opened it and pretended it didn’t still bother him greatly to see himself standing there, all wide-eyed and earnest.

“You’re late,” he said.

“I was training!” she protested.

“Good.” He was a little surprised at that. “Was Jeritza there?”

Annette flopped down on the bed, forgetting that she was taller now. Felix heard the thunk the back of her head - _his_ head - made against the wall.

“Be careful with that,” he snapped.

She sat up again, rubbing the back of her head. “Sorry. And no, he wasn’t there. If he was, I’d probably be in pieces on the training ground floor right now.”

“You mean _I_ would.” Raised an interesting question, though. Lacking an intact body to go back to, would he rather keep hold of Annette’s body or vanish into the ether? He genuinely wasn’t sure which was worse, but found himself leaning towards sweet oblivion.

“I was joking!" Annette protested. "I wouldn't do anything to hurt your body!" She looked offended at this slight on her character. "How do you even make me look that scary? And are you absolutely sure I’ll have to actually duel him? Can’t I just ask?”

“No,” said Felix.

“But how do you even know?” she whined.

“Because I’ve done it before.” He almost smiled at the memory.

She widened her eyes. “Did you win?”

Felix scoffed. “No. But I impressed him.” It had been for a look at a Dagdan-made gauntlet, and Sylvain had clucked at him afterwards until he went to the infirmary, and Professor Manuela had admonished him for taking up resources that were intended for actual battles, not masculine spats in the training ground, and it had all been worth it to see that craftsmanship, to hold it in his hand, to wear it light as a glove and deadly as a snowcat’s fangs.

Annette had certainly perked up. “So I don’t have to win? I just have to show up?”

“What? That’s what you took from that?” Felix banged his fist on the desk to drive the point home and regretted it - Annette’s soft hand was still bruised from hitting Sylvain yesterday. “You have to _impress_ him. Fight like your life depends on it.”

Annette laughed. “That won’t be a problem. Trust me.”

“Fight like you want to kill him.”

“...Might be more of a problem.”

“You’d better not embarrass me.”

Annette looked so crestfallen that he had to look away. It was unnerving to see his face do that. “Do you think I’m an embarrassment?” she asked plaintively.

“I just- ugh.” He turned away. “No, I don’t.”

“Really?”

“Don’t push it. And shave. You’re making me look unkempt.”

She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Oh, I never thought of that.”

“And shave _carefully_. That’s my body you’re in. Look after it.” He narrowed his eyes. “What’s so funny?”

Annette tried unsuccessfully to hide her amusement. “Nothing.”

“Good.”

“It’s just, you know, telling me not to nick your face shaving when you’re absolutely covered in scars.”

“That’s no reason to add any more.” His back stiffened as his brain caught up. “And you’re not supposed to be looking!”

“It’s hard not to!” she argued back.

“I don’t look at _your_ body!”

She folded her arms. “Well, good!”

“Fine!”

They glared at each other in silence for a few moments until Annette, true to form, couldn't bear to leave it unbroken. “But I also wouldn’t get mad if you accidentally saw something because it’s hard to be in a body without looking at it at all!”

Felix's anger roared back to meet her. “Somehow I’m managing just fine!”

“Fine!”

“Good!” He sighed. Annette’s body just didn’t hold a grudge as well as his own did. “So what’s the plan today?” he asked at last.

Annette looked at him, sullen and wary. “I guess I hang around the training ground and convince Professor Jeritza to let me borrow his fancy knives? And then I can go to the greenhouse to get the red weaveroot, and-”

“No, I’ll go to the greenhouse,” said Felix firmly. “That way it’ll all be over sooner and we can go back to our own lives.”

“Will you have time?” Annette asked. “I know I - I mean you - have a lot to do today.”

“I’m sure I can fit it in,” he said flatly.

She looked worried at that but didn’t dare ask him for more details. “Okay,” she said. “Meet up in the labs after class?”

“Fine by me,” said Felix. One more day of this and then he’d be free, and he could hole himself up in the training ground for a week and not have to see another person that he didn’t get to beat up.

“I’d better go before anyone sees me,” said Annette. “It was pretty awkward yesterday!”

“Bye,” said Felix.

Annette hopped off the bed, a little ungainly in her unfamiliar shape, and opened the door stealthily, peeking left and right.

“Great,” said Felix. “Now you don’t look suspicious at all.”

She gave him a grin and a thumbs-up.

He sighed.

Almost free of her, and then she turned. “Don’t forget your appointment with Ingrid today!” The door closed with ominous finality.

Felix glared heavenward, to where the Blue Sea Star sailed behind the clouds, beyond the ceiling. “Could you not have found a better way to punish me for my sins than this?” he asked.

From outside he heard his own voice, absurdly cheerful. “Oh, hi, Mercedes!”

He closed his eyes. The call of sweet oblivion was sounding better and better.

*

“Heeey, Felix. Whatcha doing?”

Sylvain stood at the end of the dormitory corridor, leaning rakishly on the windowsill.

“Nothing much,” said Annette brightly. _Just got to learn to shave and also best Professor Jeritza in single combat, no big._ “Just going to take care of some stuff and, uh, polish my sword before class.”

“Sounds thrilling,” said Sylvain. He shifted position slightly and the sunlight fell across his face, illuminating a pair of impressive black eyes.

Annette’s mouth fell open. “Sylvain…!” She'd forgotten about this little detail of Felix's day.

“Oh, yeah, this?” He touched the bridge of his nose tenderly. “This is what we call a war wound from the noblest war of all.” He paused dramatically. “The war… of love.”

“Who… who did it?” Annette asked faintly, knowing that it was what was expected.

“Relax, I’m not going to ask you to avenge me.”

“I wasn’t offering-”

“But, uh, it was Annette, actually.” He scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “I’d ask you not to tell anyone, but I’m pretty sure everyone already knows.”

_Felix, why?_ She tried to look sympathetic and not guilty. _How am I going to get out of this one?_

Sylvain lowered his head and looked at her through his eyelashes. “Not even an ‘I told you so’? I must really look pathetic this time.”

He looked so sad about it that Annette’s heart stung for him. “What? No, of course you don’t! I’m sure she didn’t mean it. She probably just slipped or something.”

“Oh, she meant it all right. Not even Annette is _that_ clumsy.”

“Hey!” Static electricity crackled at her fingertips, and she quickly clenched her fists and quenched it in her palms.

A sly grin cut through Sylvain’s tragic act. “Sorry, sorry! I wasn’t insulting her. I didn’t realise you felt that way.”

Annette realised only too late the trap she’d stepped into.

_What would Felix do?_

_Hit him?_

_Nope. That’s what got us into this mess, Annie!_

“No, no, that’s not what I meant," she said, knowing it sounded thin. "It’s just that I know she’s not like that.”

Sylvain leaned on the windowsill. “Go on.”

Time to extricate herself delicately from this conversation. “Are you going to see Professor Manuela about that, or…?”

“She told me it’d serve as a good warning to every other girl in Garreg Mach,” he said cheerfully. “So I’m stuck looking like this for a few days.”

“Wow.”

“Right? Stone cold.”

“What about Mercie...edes?” Annette suggested, though she was a little less inclined to help him out now.

He stroked his bruises again. “Nah. I don’t want to ruin my chances with her by showing up at her door looking like this.”

Annette almost choked. His chances? “Oh, I don’t think she’d be interested in anything like that.”

“Is that a challenge, Felix?”

“No, I just-”

“Because that sounded like a challenge.”

“Really, no-”

“And I never turn down a challenge.”

_Oh, Mercie, please forgive me._

Sylvain cocked his head, silhouetted black against the morning sunlight again. “You’re chatty today, Felix. Everything okay?”

“Oh, sure.” But in that split second the idea had already occurred to her. And it was a good idea, right? Boys must talk about these things just as much as girls. “Actually, there’s one thing…”

“Anything for my oldest friend.”

“Do you, um.” She cleared her throat. “Do you have any shaving tips?”

She was unprepared for Sylvain’s reaction. “Felix!” He clapped her hard on the back, arm around her shoulder, and opened the door to his dorm room, ushering her in. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this day. Felix, my pure, innocent boy, today you’re going to become a man.”

Somehow she knew Felix would kill her for this.

*

Felix got through the morning in single-minded determination, head down, goal clear in his mind. _Get to the greenhouse._ He knew he’d heard the greenhouse keeper say something about a crop of red weaveroot - and it was almost a surprise that he remembered it, as he also remembered not caring about it at the time. Annette and her weird mind, presumably.

“Hey, Annette, could you-?”

He turned and aimed a glare at the source of the voice.

A face retreated back into a crowd of students, with a muttered apology.

He’d barely glanced at Annette’s planner this morning. With any luck, he’d never need to care about her schedule ever again after today. As soon as morning classes had ended he was out of the classroom before even Mercedes could corner him, and on his way to the greenhouse. And there it was. In, harvest, out. He might even have time to give Annette some last minute pointers for Jeritza.

“Annie, there you are!”

He almost jumped out of his skin.

Mercedes caught him by the arm before he could fall down the stone steps. “Whoops! Watch your step!”

“Thank you,” he managed, narrowly avoiding being pressed into her by the momentum of his trip.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I wasn’t startled!”

She just laughed. “Where are you rushing off to, anyway? Ingrid told me we were going to give her some make-up advice today!”

Felix’s heart sank. “That came up, yes.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” said Mercedes, feigning offence. “I had to find out from Ingrid herself before class. Annie, how could you?”

Were they always like this? Being Annette was exhausting. “It was very spontaneous,” he said. “I would have told you if I’d had the chance, but I didn’t want to disturb you so late in the evening.” _There,_ he thought. _Watertight._

“You should know I always have time for you, Annie,” said Mercedes, putting an arm around Felix’s shoulder. _Annette’s shoulder._

Movement caught his eye and he saw Sylvain strolling nonchalantly over to them, eyes on Mercedes, cocky grin firmly in place.

Felix glared at him.

Sylvain hesitated.

Felix narrowed his eyes.

Sylvain quietly backed off.

Mercedes didn’t seem to have noticed. “I thought we were going to plan everything out before Ingrid came over, to make sure it would all be perfect. I’ve been keeping a _lovely_ sweet apple tea in reserve just for the occasion!”

“I changed my mind,” said Felix. “I thought we probably didn’t need to plan things out to that extent.” It was make-up. How much planning could it possibly take?

“But it would have been fun, wouldn’t it?” said Mercedes blithely. “I haven’t seen much of you these last few days. I’ve missed our midnight tea parties.”

This was not seeing much of each other?

Felix glanced at the greenhouse, gleaming tantalisingly in the sun just in front of him. He could _see_ inside.

“Maybe I should be glad you’re not burning the candle quite so much at both ends, though,” said Mercedes. “It’s good for you to loosen your grip, I think. But has something happened? You’ve been a little different, if you don’t mind my saying.”

He did mind. But he forced himself to say, “I’m not sure what you mean,” in as neutral a tone as he could manage.

He almost recoiled when Mercedes touched his hair. “Oh, you know. Just little things.”

He gently took her hand from the back of his head. She changed her grip casually, holding his hand, and laughed.

“Oh, Annie, I didn’t mean anything by it! It’s nice.”

“You don’t think it looks… severe?” he found himself asking. Not that he cared.

Mercedes let out a thoughtful breath, which wasn’t what he’d been hoping to hear. “Well, maybe… How about this?”

He froze like a prey animal when she reached up and teased a few strands of hair free, combing them gently down to frame his face.  
“That’s a little softer.”

And then, because he knew it was expected of him, he said, “Thank you.”

Mercedes’ smile was like a sunbeam. “Oh, Annie. You’re silly sometimes.”

“I have to go to the greenhouse for an errand,” he said, unsure how he was meant to respond to that. Annette spent so much of her time talking. It was amazing she ever had the energy for anything else. How was he supposed to get out of this? He didn’t often find himself having to navigate out of conversations; other people usually did that for him. He opted for the direct route. “I’ll see you later,” he said, and went. The greenhouse was waiting. 

Mercedes’s hand on his shoulder was surprisingly firm, and Annette’s body didn’t have the mass or discipline to pull away. “Oh no you don’t,” she said brightly. “Ingrid’s waiting!”

“Wait, what?”

Mercedes had already started marching him back to the dorms, and no matter how he pulled, she was stronger than Annette.

“ _Now?_ ”

“I know, isn’t it exciting? She just showed up at my door and told me to do my worst.” She giggled behind her hand. “Isn’t she adorable?”

Felix had never heard anyone describe Ingrid as ‘adorable’ and wasn’t sure he wanted to be in the vicinity of anyone who would. “First I really have to-”

“Not today,” said Mercedes. “I know what you’re like. First it’s one errand and then it’s ten. I’m not going to let you miss this. I wouldn’t be much of a best friend if I did.”

“But-”

“Whatever you have to do in the greenhouse, I’m sure it can wait.”

Felix watched the greenhouse grow small, reaching uselessly, desperately, out to it. Mercedes only laughed heartlessly at him. She opened the door to her room. Felix had an impression of warmth, perfume, an undercurrent of baking.

Ingrid sat on a chair with her hands clenched in her lap, staring down as though waiting to be punished. She looked about as terrified as Felix felt.

Mercedes shut the door and lifted the lid on a silver teapot that leaked fragrant steam. “That looks perfect,” she said, beaming, and clapped her hands. “All right, then! Let’s begin.”


	5. The Supreme Ordeal

Annette made her way, freshly-shaven and a little dazed, to the training ground, where Jeritza would almost certainly be. The only thing she knew clearly at this point was that she could never speak of this to Felix. Ever. If he asked her if she’d talked to Sylvain she would say she had, and that they had had a perfectly ordinary conversation.

She pushed on the training ground doors, and froze suddenly.

_What if we keep our bodies’ memories when we switch back?_

A terrifying thought, and one she wished she could shove back into whatever awful pit in her mind it had crawled out of. She ran back through all of the reading she’d done on mind switching and soul exchanges and all the different names for what had happened to her, but couldn’t remember anything one way or the other about where all of these experiences she was having would go. Would she leave them here or bring them with her?

And actually, if she could put the mortifying nature of the whole thing aside, it would be an _amazing experiment_ , and have far-reaching connotations for what people considered the self, or the soul, or the mind, or the…

The training ground doors creaked open, and she had to move quickly to avoid being swept out of the way.

Caspar emerged, rubbing his shoulder. “Hey, Felix.”

“Oh, Caspar! Hi!”

"Just between you and me, I wouldn't go in there." He scrubbed at his face with the towel around his neck, and shook sweat from his hair. "Professor Jeritza's in one of his moods."

That didn't sound good. "What moods?" Annette asked nervously.

Caspar gave her a meaningful look. “You know. The ones where you almost wish he’d just go out and murder someone if it’ll get it out of his system.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Annette, trying to sound nonchalant. “Those moods. Yeah, I know them all right.”

“He might have actually thrown me through the wall if a couple of Knights of Seiros hadn’t been in there training at the same time and held him back.”

Annette tried to make an interested noise. _This is fun for them, remember, Annie. This is how they like to spend their time!_

“So, you know. Might be best to skip the session for today. No shame in walking away.”

“Thanks, but I have something I need to talk to Professor Jeritza about today,” she said.

Caspar sighed and shrugged. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. You’re the strongest. Well, I thought I’d do the decent thing and warn you anyway.”

“Thank you!” Annette called after him as he swung his jacket over his shoulder, wincing as he did so, and headed back into the monastery complex. “And take care of yourself!”

Caspar gave her an odd look. “Uh, sure.”

_Everyone’s always so surprised whenever I say anything nice._

The training ground stood open before her. All she had to do was ask Professor Jeritza nicely if she could borrow his knives, and maybe if she asked nicely enough he’d let her without making her fight him. Because that wasn’t a normal thing that people did, was it? And maybe Felix just didn’t know that because - whisper it - he hadn’t tried being nice?

The Knights of Seiros Caspar had mentioned were talking in the corner, giving each other pointers on technique. They looked up when she came in, a little warily. Because they were worried about her after what had happened to Caspar or because Felix had somehow insulted them too?

Professor Jeritza was by the advanced weapons racks, where they kept the iron and steel rather than the wood. He ran his finger over the blade of an axe.

"Felix," he said without looking up. "I was hoping you would come by."

“I’m your… guy!” she said as cheerfully as she could manage. “I didn’t really come here to fight, actually, though, I just wanted to talk about something.”

“How disappointing.” Professor Jeritza drew out the words, observing the sheen on the axe head as he tilted it to and fro. “Then speak, if you must waste my time.”

Annette could see where this was going already. The Knights were still talking, but they kept looking over, just in case. “I was hoping to ask a favour of you, if that would be okay.”

“I said speak.” He moved very slightly. Annette couldn’t see his eyes through the mask he wore, but she was sure he was looking right at her. She could feel his gaze on her.

“Okay! Well, um, you know you have those knives made of Morfis bronze?” She should have asked Felix for more details on how that conversation had gone. “I mean, if you still have them. Do you still have them?”

Professor Jeritza took a breath in a way that made it look like he would speak again, and Annette realised in a rush that she would rather he not speak, actually, and pushed on.

“Well, I was wondering if it would be okay if I um, borrowed them. Just for a day. Maybe two?” Oh no, she thought, he was going to ask her why she wanted them, and she hadn’t thought about a cover story for that at all. Still, by the way he stared at her so piercingly, he might have already seen right through her Felix-exterior to her quivering Annette-soul.

Professor Jeritza put the axe back in its rack. “I told you not to waste my time.”

There was a reason Annette didn’t spend much time in the training ground. “I was just asking… I didn’t mean-”

“You already know the answer to your request.”

“I do?” _It’s no, isn’t it? The answer is no._

“And yet you claim not to have come to fight.”

Annette tilted her head as if that would shake everything into a position where it made sense.

Professor Jeritza picked up a sword from the rack. Not a training sword. He threw it at her.

Felix’s body caught it automatically. Okay, fine, this was the _one_ thing she could get used to about this whole thing.

He took up another sword, and held it up to his face as though inspecting its edge. “Well,” he said. “Perhaps one must not sully such a duel with as vulgar a word as ‘fight’. Perhaps that is your mode of thought?”

Annette was trying to remember all of the swordfighting posture Professor Byleth had tapped and knocked and rapped into her yesterday. “That’s what I was thinking,” she said, hoping her tone didn’t give her away.

“Very well,” said Professor Jeritza. “Then you know the rules.”

Annette did not know the rules but she assumed they were pretty cut-throat. She waited for Professor Jeritza to take up his position and give her her cue to take up hers, but he didn’t seem to bother even settling his grip before moving as quick as a snake right at her, covering half the training ground in what looked like a single stride.

She didn’t even have time to squeak before he was on her, and the sword was knocked out of her hand with such force that it didn’t even hurt until a second later. She saw the sword go skidding off, heard the Knights of Seiros in the corner exclaim, and then Professor Jeritza was open to her, and, hardly even thinking about it, she formed a fist with her aching sword hand and brought it up in an almighty blow that connected with such electric satisfaction that she almost yelled with delight.

Professor Jeritza stumbled, and straightened up, fingertips brushing his jaw. “Luring me with deceptive incompetence,” he said. “I see.”

“I’m full of surprises!” replied Annette, trying hard not to grin all over her face. Why had she never done this before? Fighting in Felix’s body was _fun_. And easy. She’d hit _Professor Jeritza_.

“I hope one of those surprises isn’t cockiness,” said Professor Jeritza. “We aren’t finished here. Pick up your sword.”

_It didn’t count?_ Well, she’d just have to do it again. “O-okay!” Annette did so, keeping her eyes on Professor Jeritza all the while. Felix’s body was thrumming with energy. She’d never felt this strong before.

“An unexpected action, yes,” he said musingly. “A costly one, too, allowing yourself to be hit to draw in an opponent who does not expect to reach you.”

Annette tried to pretend her hand didn’t hurt as she picked up the sword again. Maybe Felix wouldn’t notice when they switched back.

Professor Jeritza moved and Annette twitched, ready to act or react, ready for _something_ , but he was just getting into a better position, stepping effortlessly into a stance as perfect as any Annette had seen in the combat manuals she’d borrowed from the library the night before. No one needed to prod _him_ into place. She tried to copy him as best she could.

“Now,” he said, “let the match begin.”

*

This was a whole side of Ingrid that Felix had never seen before. She sat meekly and asked for advice, listening to Mercedes’s gentle suggestions. She wasn’t exactly built like a barbarian or particularly ungainly (on the contrary, Felix held her grace on a horse or pegasus in very high esteem), but Mercedes’s fine teacup looked too small and delicate in her hand somehow. Something about her just _looked_ like a giant sitting down to a fairy tea party. For the first time, Felix was secretly relieved to be in Annette’s body, because at least he looked as though he belonged here, if you didn’t look too hard at the blank fear in his eyes.

So far he’d managed to get through it by deferring to Mercedes on everything, and she was happy enough to hold forth. Occasionally an agreement was called for, which he gave. It was almost interesting to see how many things someone could put on their face.

_I can get through this,_ he thought. _There can’t be much more to go. Surely._

Ingrid was studying her face in a hand mirror as Mercedes refilled her teacup.

“So,” said Mercedes. “What do you think so far?”

_So far?_

“I don’t know how you do it.” Ingrid touched her cheek as carefully as though it was made of glass. Felix was quietly amazed by how different she looked in make-up, though part of him thought her astonishment was overdramatic, given the situation _he_ was currently in. “How do you learn how to do this?”

Mercedes laughed lightly. “By doing it a lot, mostly. And making an awful lot of mistakes when you’re younger and don’t care so much how you look when you walk down the street.”

“Thank you,” said Felix as Mercedes refilled his cup too. It was a surprisingly nice tea blend, one he didn’t remember ever having had before. Was there a hint of violets? If there was, he had no idea how he knew it or why he liked it.

“But what about when you mess up?” asked Ingrid pleadingly.

“Then it washes off. It’s only make-up, Ingrid. It’s not life and death.”

“But it’s your _face_. Even if you do it exactly how you wanted, if it looks ridiculous then you look ridiculous front and centre to everyone you see. How do you find the confidence?”

“You sound like such a blushing flower, and I know for a fact you’re not!” Mercedes hid another laugh behind her hand. “Right, Annie?”

“Right,” said Felix. He felt a little like he wasn’t supposed to be seeing this. Ingrid would probably not be happy knowing he’d seen this side of her. But it was strangely interesting, too. It had been a while since they’d been in the same room together without her sniping at him, or him riling her up. Even longer since she’d talked about herself in his vicinity. “I don’t know why you care what people think of you,” he said. “If they don’t like it, they can stare down the sharp end of your lance instead.”

Ingrid choked back a shocked laugh.

“My,” said Mercedes, “you _are_ bloodthirsty today, Annie.”

Felix felt his cheeks heating up. Of all the things about Annette’s body, its propensity to blush was… well, certainly in the top ten things he hated the most about it.

“No,” said Ingrid, “she’s right.”

Which she _never_ would have said if she’d known that it was Felix saying it.

“It is silly to worry about my appearance given everything else. What make-up I choose to wear doesn’t make me any more or less of a knight.”

“Very well said!” Mercedes put the teapot back on the tray. “Though I can’t say I condone threatening people with weapons for their opinions.” She gave Felix a mischievous look.

_She knows something,_ he thought.

“It’s kind of interesting,” said Ingrid, and now she was looking at Felix too, and he didn’t like where any of this was going at all. “Here I am, all done up to the nines, and if I’m not mistaken, you’re completely bare-faced, Annette.”

Felix blinked.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without make-up on.”

“I’m… trying out a new look,” he said, unconvincingly.

“I don’t think Annie’s had much time to get ready in the morning, what with her gentleman caller,” said Mercedes.

Felix was only glad he hadn’t been drinking his tea at the time. He sat very still, hoping it would buy him some more time to process this turn of events.

He might have been able to cope with just Mercedes teasing him, but then Ingrid perked up. He had never seen her smile like that and hoped never to again.

“A gentleman caller, huh?” she said. “Anyone we know?”

What was he supposed to say? For all he knew they were talking about someone sneaking in and out of Annette’s room long before all of this nonsense… No. He couldn’t bring himself to hold such a pathetic hope. He was a warrior. He would not flinch from the truth.

“Someone _you_ know quite well,” said Mercedes wickedly.

“Mercedes!” hissed Felix.

Mercedes only laughed.

He dared a glance at Ingrid, who was staring at him with her mouth open. “Wait,” she said. “So that’s why yesterday…?”

“It’s not Sylvain,” he said quickly. The last thing he needed was anyone to be thinking there had been anything more behind his encounter with Sylvain in the greenhouse than the obvious. Annette’s encounter. Whatever. Of course, what he had actually just said was that his gentleman caller was Felix. Another nail hammered into the coffin of his reputation.

"No! Really? _Him?_ "

Mercedes nodded, smiling like a demon who'd got into heaven.

“Oh, no, I’m going to have to apologise to him, aren’t I?” Ingrid hid her face in her hands, and startled backwards to avoid smudging her make-up. “I’m so sorry, Annette, I- Goddess, I’m so embarrassed.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” said Mercedes soothingly.

Ingrid shook her head. “I was so sharp with him. I’m definitely going to have to say something. I _knew_ he was acting weird. I just put it down to Felix being…”

Felix bristled silently. _Go on_ , he thought. _End the sentence. I dare you._

“Well,” said Ingrid. “You know.”

“I don’t know,” said Felix. “Actually.”

Ingrid and Mercedes exchanged glances.

“And we just work on homework anyway,” he added.

Ingrid snorted.

“Oh, Annie, I’m sorry for teasing you.” Mercedes reached out and took one of the loose tresses of hair framing Felix’s face.

He submitted to it, trying to imagine he was in a combat situation. _Bide your time_ , he thought. _Don’t go charging around making things worse. You aren’t the boar._

“There’s nothing wrong with it, you know. And he’s a good person.”

Ingrid barely stifled an explosive laugh.

Felix glared at her with such venom that she fell silent. Probably more out of surprise at seeing such an expression on Annette’s face than out of any real intimidation, but it fulfilled its purpose, which was to get her to shut up.

“Okay,” said Mercedes, “maybe that’s enough of that for now. Annie, how about your big finale?”

“My what?”

“Annie, no need to drag out the suspense!”

Ah, here was the old fear back again. “Remind me.”

Instead, Mercedes turned to Ingrid. “Annie’s been plotting this for weeks,” she said. “She’s perfected a palette that will complement your eyes.”

At least Ingrid looked nervous again too. “O-oh,” she said. “Okay...”

“No need to worry. I’ve seen it, though obviously it loses some of its magic when it’s only a test and not framing your lovely eyes.” She kept looking at Felix as though she expected him to say something. He had no idea what he was supposed to say. “I’m excited to see it on you at last! Aren’t you, Annie?”

“Very,” said Felix faintly.

“Well, let’s get started!” Mercedes moved out of the way of the cosmetic jars and boxes that had actually started to be quite interesting when Felix was safely away from them and not expected to touch them. “No need to be shy, Annie, I’ve been having all the fun so far! It’s your turn.”

Why had Annette not warned him about this? He wished he’d been paying more attention to what Mercedes had been saying. Eyes? Colour? What colour were Ingrid’s eyes? He stole a glance. Green, apparently. What did that mean? “I think you’d be better at this,” he said, and added a grudging, “Mercie,” just to try to soften her up.

“Nonsense! You’ve been practising so hard!”

He flailed around for some reason why it would be impossible. “I’ve… forgotten how it works. Because I’ve… been so busy lately.”

“I’m sure you haven’t forgotten,” Mercedes reassured him.

“I have.”

She was looking at him in a strange way, such that he could almost think, as impossible as it was, that she _knew_ exactly what had happened. She knew who he was. She was toying with him.

“How about I talk you through it?” she suggested. “It would be helpful for Ingrid as well to know what you’re doing.”

This was Mercedes’s trap. The velvet of her personality hid a core of steel.

Felix knew when he was beaten. “That sounds… good.”

Ingrid sat like a prisoner waiting for interrogation.

Felix waited like a prison guard doing his first interrogation.

“Okay, Ingrid, close your eyes,” said Mercedes. “There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.”

*

Annette hadn’t managed to get another hit on Professor Jeritza after that first one. He had managed to get plenty on her. She’d got up every time, hoping he might not notice and end the match, but it was getting pretty ridiculous now, and Felix’s body was sore and aching in a dozen places, and he was going to _kill_ her when he saw what she’d done to it. At least his body wasn’t too tired yet, but it didn’t really make that much difference.

She saw one of the Knights in the corner approach, weapon out, to intervene, and then she saw with her own eyes how Professor Jeritza fended them off while still giving Annette no quarter, without missing a single beat.

There was no time even to process what was happening - her mind seemed only able to operate in flashes between frantically scrambling out of the way of Professor Jeritza’s weapon and her own ineffectual clashes with him. She hadn’t considered the fact that she wasn’t wearing any kind of armour until now, though maybe that was a part of the rules he had mentioned.

_This is bad._

Professor Jeritza had his sword right at her throat and drove her backwards, step by inevitable step.

_Get out of the way._

She darted to the side and he only followed her effortlessly, and merely drove her back again, moving quickly and decisively enough to cut off her escape route.

_How?_

He was getting closer. One of the Knights was shouting, and both Annette and Professor Jeritza ignored her.

_No!_

Too late - Professor Jeritza caught her on the wrist with the flat of his blade and she dropped hers with a howl of shock and pain. The wall was coming up behind her; she was in its shadow, cool on her damp skin. The tone of the Knight’s shouting grew more urgent but no one came to separate them, or if they did then Professor Jeritza kept them easily at bay.

It was like being in battle - duck a blow - which of course she’d done before - dodge, lunge for sword - but entirely different - lose footing, good job - because Felix’s body was the wrong size - roll frantically to the side, hear unmistakeable sound of steel on stone - and it wanted to do different things - propel self out of the way, further from sword - like charge forward when she wanted to draw back - reach for sword, almost lose hand - and she couldn’t keep this up forever - notice blood on shirt, feel mortified - oh Goddess Felix was going to _kill_ her - if Professor Jeritza didn’t do it first - sword still too far away - she was letting everyone down - why couldn’t she just-

She heard Professor Jeritza’s sword shear through the air above her, threw her hands above her head, eyes squeezed shut, and shocked the world into electric light.

*

Mercedes’s voice had grown less and less confident the longer the whole sorry charade had gone on, punctuated by Ingrid muttering, “Ow,” and Felix telling her to hold still in as patient a manner as he could manage while he tried not to poke her in the eye again. So far, even his most strenuous efforts were raising Mercedes’s eyebrows.

“And that,” said Mercedes uncertainly, “should be that.”

Felix set down the fine brush at last, trying to rub the iridescent dust from his fingertips. Surely he hadn’t done that badly. He had followed Mercedes’s instructions exactly. How did girls do this to their own faces?

“Can I open my eyes now?” asked Ingrid.

“Um,” said Mercedes.

Ingrid opened her eyes.

Felix had, in fact, done that badly.

“I told you you’d be better at it,” he said.

“The important thing to remember,” said Mercedes, “is that make-up washes off. Right, Annie?”

Felix nodded.

“Can I have the mirror?” asked Ingrid suspiciously.

Mercedes hid the hand mirror behind her back.

Felix wondered how good Annette’s body was at running.

“And everyone has off days,” said Mercedes. “Even the most experienced person!”

“Okay, this is making me kind of nervous now.” Ingrid was smiling, clearly waiting for someone to tell her that they were joking and she looked beautiful.

Felix got up. “I really need to get this errand run in the greenhouse.” Let Mercedes try to stop him now.

She didn’t. She held the mirror face downwards and turned it in her hands, frowning lightly in thought. “Maybe that would be best,” she said at last, and again there was that odd pause, as though she was waiting for him to say something. He waited. She mouthed, _I’ll cover for you._

He nodded his acknowledgement. Just as he got to the door he remembered that he should be behaving more like Annette, and said, “This has been very nice.”

He didn’t wait for the sound of Ingrid taking her first look at his work, but he heard it anyway, echoing around the courtyard.

The greenhouse keeper smiled at him when he entered. People were always smiling at him now. It made him suspicious. They all wanted something. “I’m here to harvest the red weaveroot,” he said. At least Annette’s idiotic eagerness to please gave him essentially a foolproof excuse to do whatever he needed to do.

The greenhouse keeper beamed. “Oh, good news! Professor Manuela was just in here, and she cut it all herself.”

“Wait, what?”

“I’ve been saying for years that she needs to start running her own errands,” said the greenhouse keeper. “She can’t keep relying on you students to do everything for her.”

Felix made himself think it through. It wouldn’t do to explain that he needed the red weaveroot for himself; that would only invite more questions, and questions were something he was not doing well at. If only Mercedes hadn’t dragged him off to draw on Ingrid’s face then he’d have been able to harvest what he needed and no one would have been any the wiser, and this stupid experience would all be a distant memory. As long as Annette held up her end of the bargain.

“You should enjoy an evening off for once, Annette,” said the greenhouse keeper kindly.

There was only one way to solve this, and that was to go straight to the source. Hopefully Manuela liked Annette. Shouldn’t be a problem, he thought sourly. Everyone else did. “I will,” he said, and even remembered to add, “Thank you.”

*

When the dust and smoke cleared, Professor Jeritza was no longer standing over her. Annette sat up. _Oh, you’ve done it now, Annie._ She remembered tapping into Felix’s neglected magic that first morning, lighting the candle with sparks from his fingers, and how guilty she had felt about it, and almost laughed. No hiding it now. This time there were witnesses. And so irresponsible! Using that much magic when Felix’s body had no idea what it was doing! She could have killed someone!

Oh Goddess had she killed Professor Jeritza?

Professor Jeritza was on his back a few metres away, his sword still coruscating faintly with the aftershocks of the lightning strike.

_There goes our chance of getting hold of his knives and fixing this mess._

Annette got up tentatively, ready to throw herself on his mercy. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I just panicked, and I didn’t even really know I could do that, I mean, I’ve definitely never done it before, and if you want we can start again, and I promise I won’t ever do it again? Just please give me another chance, I really want to see those knives for myself, you don’t understand what it means to me-”

Professor Jeritza, still lying on the ground, raised his hand. A tendril of smoke rose from the cuff of his sleeve. “Enough of this pathetic display.”

Annette shut her mouth. So much for not embarrassing Felix.

“I grant you your request,” he said. “It pleases me to see you paying attention to my advice.”

Annette blinked.

“Merely deepening your studies is not enough. You must broaden them. You are doing so.”

Annette let out a relieved sigh. “Oh. Yay.” She coughed. “I mean, yes.”

“I will fetch your reward.” Professor Jeritza sat up and dusted himself off. “Be aware that such tactics will not work a second time.”

“Of course.” _Like I’m ever going to fight you again_ , she thought, with her most serious face on. _You’re Felix’s problem now._


	6. Bruised Pride

What Felix hadn’t considered was that when he got to Professor Manuela’s room, where she currently was, going by the banging and thumping around he could hear through the door, was that he would still need a reason to get some of the red weaveroot from her. He knocked on the door anyway.

He wondered if she’d even hear it over all the crashing going on inside. Something seemed to smash. Felix’s begrudging better nature began to wonder if he should force his way in to make sure everything was fine, notwithstanding what had happened the last time he’d given in to such instincts, but Professor Manuela swore loudly and energetically, saving him from himself.

“Professor Manuela?” he asked.

The noise stopped almost immediately.

“Just a minute,” called Professor Manuela, all sweetness and light.

Felix waited. It gave him a few extra minutes to think about how he could convince her to just give him some herbs that she probably needed for the infirmary.

The sounds of things being moved and dropped started up again, but more stealthily. “Who is it?” called Professor Manuela sweetly.

“It’s…” He sighed. “Annette.”

“Oh! Maybe you can help me with… Ahem. Do you need anything?”

He tried to come up with a convincing cover story. Failed. Gave up. “I wanted to ask about the red weaveroot that was growing in the greenhouse.”

Professor Manuela’s voice had shed some of its syrup. “Oh? What for?”

Felix made a face at the closed door. How was he supposed to know what for? Annette hadn’t told him what else the damn thing was used for, so how could he make up a lie? He assumed Professor Manuela wasn’t planning on switching anybody else’s bodies back with it.

“You know what, give me a second,” she said, and finally opened the door a crack, enough for her to look out but not for Felix to look in. “What was it you wanted to ask about it, Annette?”

Again he tried to fumble for some kind of harmless story, and again came up empty. “I wanted to know if I could have some,” he said.

Professor Manuela raised her eyebrows. “ _Have_ some? But… whatever for?” She opened the door a little further and leaned on the frame. “That’s strong stuff, you know. If you need anything - if there’s something wrong, I’d be happy to mix up whatever you need.” Professor Manuela wasn’t a naturally maternal person, but she was trying, and Felix appreciated her struggle in a way he had never appreciated it before. “Is there anything wrong? Or, you know, no questions asked, but if you tell me what you need, then-”

_What is this herb actually for?_ “Nothing like that,” said Felix, whatever ‘that’ was. Think. What would Annette be doing? “I’m just doing a… favour. For…” Who would need a herb? “...the greenhouse keeper.”

Professor Manuela frowned. “I was just down there. I’m sure if she’d needed anything she could have just asked me.”

_Idiot._ Well, what else might Annette need it for?

“I hope there’s nothing… untoward going on.” Professor Manuela lowered her voice, softened her tone, though her body language still screamed ‘awkward’. “You know, Annette, rumours go around every class about the… romantic applications of red weaveroot, but it’s just a myth, dear.”

Felix felt himself blushing furiously.

Professor Manuela sighed. “Oh, honey. Do you want to come inside and talk about it?”

Before he knew it, he was inside Professor Manuela’s room, and she was pushing a stack of clothes off a chair and onto the floor and sitting him down on it. “I’d make tea, but…” She picked up a teacup, looked inside, made a face, put it back. “Anyway, you don’t need to tell me who it is, of course, but it might help to talk.”

“This isn’t,” said Felix. “I don’t. No. This is wrong. I didn’t know anything about this. That’s not why.” Spinning words out of nowhere, hoping some would stick. “It has… magical uses.” Magic. Yes. Magic was what Annette did. “I wanted to try something. Non-romantic.”

“Oh?” Professor Manuela studied him curiously. “And what would that be?”

What had Annette said about it? “It’s just an experiment,” he said. “Because red weaveroot has… joining properties. I want to see how that… works. On things.”

“I see.”

Would she give it to him? He hoped so. He had nothing else to give. That was it. He was out.

“What’s it worth to you?” Professor Manuela asked at last. She rested her chin on her hand.

“What?”

Professor Manuela smiled. “Maybe we can cut a deal.”

Felix was rapidly losing patience with this entire day. The sun was going down already. But if he walked away, he lost his one chance at not having to wake up like this yet again. As much as he hated it, Professor Manuela held all the power. “What kind of deal?” he asked.

“I’ve misplaced a certain necklace,” said Professor Manuela. “It’s something of a good luck charm for me, and I have a date… oh, very soon now.”

“If I help you find it, I can have some weaveroot?” asked Felix.

“You’re a bright girl, Annette.” Professor Manuela winked. “It’s gold, set with topaz and garnet…” She went on in this vein for a while. Felix let her. It was a necklace. That was all he needed to know. “I’m sure there’s a spell for it, but I can’t get it to work right. I thought about asking Professor Hanneman, but he… Well, let’s just say he considered himself to have better things to do with his time.”

“I’ll help,” said Felix. Magic? he thought. What was the point in people using magic when they could just tidy up?

He started with her desk.

“You don’t waste time, do you?” remarked Professor Manuela, not moving from her seat.

He moved papers and shook crumbs off them, found countless snapped quills and dried inkpots, unmatched earrings, sprigs of dried herbs pressed with the dead spiders between ledgers. He opened a drawer.

“Oh my,” said Professor Manuela, “I don’t think it would be in there. Annette - I think you can stay out of there, dear.”

He tried another drawer. Professor Manuela’s foot shot out and pushed it closed again. He looked at her for an explanation.

“I’ve, ahem, already looked in there,” she said. Still trying to sound saccharine, but with noticeably less success than before.

Felix kept on looking, and the more he looked, the more Professor Manuela started to hover over him, whisking things out of his way before he could move them.

“Is this it?”

“No! I said garnets, Annette.”

All he was doing was moving the mess around. He couldn’t imagine how the room had got into this state in the first place. How did this happen? It was like the glacier valleys back home in Fraldarius, carved out over aeons by slow, huge movement. He had stood in them, with their odd scattered rocks and sculpted edges, and wondered how they had begun. He was overcome by a similar feeling here.

He picked up a wisp of something that seemed to be lace and Professor Manuela squawked.

For the first time, Felix began to realise what it was he was looking through. _It’s fabric. Just fabric. Clothes. Practical clothes with no meaning._

Professor Manuela picked her way through the piles to stand unsubtly in front of him, blocking a view he was suddenly grateful not to be able to see.

“You know what,” said Professor Manuela at last, “time is passing, and I should really get going.”

“What about the-?”

“Fine, fine.” Professor Manuela waved dismissively. “You did your best, after all.”

“But I didn’t find your necklace,” pointed out Felix.

“I’ll just have to do without,” said Professor Manuela flatly. “I’m sure he isn’t worth the good luck charm anyway.”

*

Annette was admiring the ornamental chasing on the blades that Professor Jeritza had lent her when Felix entered the magic lab, eyeing the place up suspiciously as he entered. It was normal for him to be nervous after what had happened the last time he’d been in here, she thought. She raised her hand. “Over here!”

“Were you singing?” he asked.

Annette laughed. “Maybe? Honestly, I don’t even notice when I’m doing it a lot of the time.”

“Everyone else will. And stop laughing.”

“Even you must laugh sometimes,” said Annette. She’d changed into a fresh shirt before coming out here, hiding the bloody, shredded one under a pile of clothes in his room. “Maybe this will make you smile.” She held up one of the knives.

His eyes widened.

She passed it over to him.

“And the weaveroot?”

He put a satchel on the desk, still inspecting the knife. He held it, swung it experimentally, flipped it in his grip, fumbled it, whipped his hand away as the blade clattered on the desk. He growled. “Your body has no coordination at all.”

“Lucky for us yours does!” Annette sang. “Should we get started?”

“Please.”

She got to work with the preparations, copying the right sigils out of the dusty book, picking out the best weaveroot branches. “Good job, Felix, we’ve got way more than we need.”

Felix tested the weight of the blade in his hand and made a quick throwing motion. “I found out what it’s used for,” he said.

“Hm?” Annette rubbed out a line with her finger and redrew it correctly.

“Red weaveroot. How did you learn about it?”

“What?”

“Why did you suggest it?”

Annette looked up from her work. “Why, what’s it used for?”

He spluttered. “You don’t know?”

She shook her head. “I saw it mentioned as an example in one of the books I was reading. What’s it used for?”

He looked away, face red. “Nothing.”

Well, that was something to research later.

He didn’t say anything else while she worked, only continued to admire Jeritza’s dagger, casting the occasional suspicious glance her way.

“Okay,” she said at last, once the sigil was glowing nicely. “That should all be ready now.”

“Finally. What do we do?”

“Should be pretty simple! Keep hold of that knife and take a little branch of weaveroot in the other hand. Then just sit back and let the magic work.”

“I don’t have to say anything, or make any… movements?”

She looked at him questioningly, suppressing a smile. “No?”

“Good,” he said, in as gruff a tone as Annette’s body could manage.

“You can if you want to!” she said, feeling terribly wicked because she knew Felix wouldn’t want to, but she also knew that if she said it he’d make the face he was making now. Which was why she had said it. _Annie, you’re terrible!_

“Just get on with it,” he growled. Or tried to.

She did.

It wasn’t explosive this time, the light softer. The familiar tingle of magic surrounded her, and, even strange and refracted through Felix’s untrained body, the feeling made her smile. It would be good to be back. What would it be like? she wondered as the feeling grew more intense. Would she feel herself leaving Felix, moving in the open air, bodiless? Would it be quick? It grew harder to think at all as the magic gathered, harder to keep her grip on the knife and branch. It was like being in a storm, though there was no blast or roar of wind, like being in a blinding light though the sigil glowed barely brighter than the candlelight.

As Annette was trying to describe the sensory overload bypassing her senses to herself, she realised that it was already fading. Excitement shot through her. Was she-?

But the view was the same; she hadn’t moved.

And there was her body, looking around, confused and increasingly annoyed.

“Felix?” she said uncertainly.

Her body glared at her. “Why didn’t it work?”

“I don’t know.”

The sigil was faded, mostly out, a few threads glowing here and there like embers.

“I’m pretty sure I did everything right…”

“If you’d done everything right then we’d be back where we belonged!”

“But I _did_! I _felt_ it working…” Was there something she was missing? But she’d read so carefully. Maybe something had got lost in Felix’s brain that her own would have noticed.

“I didn’t feel anything,” grumbled Felix.

“Wait, nothing at all?” She looked, but he was still holding the knife and branch as he was supposed to. So that wasn’t the problem. “You must have felt something, it was everywhere.”

“Let’s just try again,” he said impatiently.

She rubbed out the sigil halfheartedly, but she wasn’t sure that doing it again would help. Without knowing what the problem was she’d just do it the same as she had before, and it would probably end in the same way. Not that she relished the idea of telling Felix that.

Luckily, she didn’t have to.

A tall shadow passed through the light streaming in from the corridor. “Is there someone in there?”

“Darn it,” Annette muttered, and called sweetly, “We’re just finishing up some studying!”

Felix bristled at her side. “Stop making me sound like that!”

She frowned at him.

“Okay, well, hurry up, I’m going to lock up now,” said the shadow outside.

“We’ll try again tomorrow,” whispered Annette.

“But what went wrong? I’m not doing this _again_.” The building panic in his voice went right to her heart, and if she'd been in her own body she didn't doubt it might even have brought sympathetic tears to her eyes, but Felix's body was too pragmatic for that. She remained calm and dry-eyed.

"Come on.” Annette gathered up the remnants of the spell and dragged Felix with her out of the lab, smiling apologetically at the mage waiting at the doorway, who looked suspicious but let them go. Felix kept trying to twist free but Annette knew how strong she was now and held onto him easily. Well, once she was back in her own body (and she would be one day! She would fix this!) she might miss this.

She pushed him into the common room, which was thankfully empty at this hour, the fire burning low.

“Okay,” she said, taking a chair. “Let’s talk through this.”

"What is there to talk about?" he demanded. There were spots of red high on his cheeks.

_Do I look like that when I'm upset?_ she wondered.

"You just have to do it again, but don't mess it up next time!"

"I didn't mess it up," said Annette, more firmly.

"Then why didn't it work?"

"I don't know! But…" How could she put her suspicions in words? "I don't think the problem was me," she said slowly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped, but he wasn’t so scary anymore somehow. Now she knew he had trouble with weird sword manoeuvres and Professor Jeritza criticised him and Ingrid wasn’t scared of him at all and Sylvain seemed to genuinely enjoy his company, Felix seemed a lot more manageable.

“Tell me again what happened when I set the spell going,” she said.

Felix sighed. “Nothing,” he said, quietly. More resigned. “I was just sitting there like an idiot and nothing happened.”

“And before I set the spell going?”

A brief annoyed expression flitted across his face. “Nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“No! It just…” She ran her fingers over her sword calluses, a little tender from the bout with Jeritza. “It doesn’t make sense to me that you’d feel nothing. I know my body, and I can feel it the second a sigil is complete. I felt it in your body, even.”

“Felix…”

He gave her a pained look.

“Sorry, sorry, _Annette_.”

He looked even more pained.

“You haven’t had any, you know, little magic accidents while you’ve been in my body? Accidentally setting things on fire and stuff?”

“No,” he said, offended.

Surely this couldn’t be true. She tried coming at it from a slightly more oblique angle. “You must have a lot of control then, right?” she asked casually.

“It’s never come up.”

“What do you mean, it’s never come up?”

“I mean nothing’s ever spontaneously combusted when I touched it.”

“And that doesn’t strike you as even a teeny tiny bit weird?”

“Why would it be weird? Do I look like I go around doing magic?”

This didn’t make sense. Annette _knew_ herself. She knew what it was like living in that body, and how even before she’d learned how to control it the magic was there, waiting, easily graspable (often too easily graspable). There was no way Felix hadn’t brushed up against it.

“You know that you can do it, right?” she burst out at last. “You can actually do magic yourself!”

He looked accusing more than surprised, shooting to his feet and banging into the table between them. “How do you know?”

“Because it’s just _there_!”

“You shouldn’t be feeling for it!” he snapped.

“It was an accident,” she said. “That very first morning, I reached for it because I light my candle in the morning with a little magic because I always forget to get more matches or I lose them, and it was crazy early and I had no idea where or who I was, and it just happened. I got a spark. And I wasn’t going to tell you because I knew you’d be mad.”

He looked away. “I’m not mad.”

“You’re pretty mad,” she said with a shy smile.

He flushed. “Not at you,” he muttered grudgingly, and sat down again.

“The second time,” she began.

His back stiffened.

“I kind of panicked, because Professor Jeritza is really really fast and really really really strong, and he doesn’t go easy on you _at all_ , and I swear I didn’t mean to but I thought he was going to chop my head off, and that’s your head really, and I knew it would be awful if he did, for, you know, a lot of reasons. It was just instinct, I swear.”

“You did _what_?” asked Felix in a whisper.

“Oh, he’s fine! I mean, it’s Professor Jeritza, and he’s probably indestructible anyway. He complimented me actually! Kind of, anyway. I mean really he was complimenting you - your body did all the hard work.”

“He _what_?”

“He said it was good that you were broadening your focus,” said Annette.

Felix didn’t look pleased by this in the slightest. “What’s so good about it?”

“Ask Professor Jeritza. But you could be pretty good at magic if you tried. Have you thought of asking Professor Byleth about lessons?”

“No! Why would I ever think of that?”

“Because it’s useful and you could be good at it!”

He seethed quietly, arms crossed. “Broaden my focus. I don’t need to broaden my focus.”

“Fe-Annette,” said Annette gently. “I think you might, if we ever want to get out of this.”

“Ugh.”

“I’m sorry.” She opted not to tell him that she’d asked Professor Jeritza to focus more on the magic side of things with her - meaning Felix - more in future, thinking that it would be a nice surprise for him when he was back in his own body.

“And what are you looking at me like that for?” he asked, annoyed. “You’re making me look ridiculous.”

“I just think it’s kind of sad,” she said. “I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t feel magic. It’s always been there for me. And thinking about poor Alois, who’s always trying so hard to learn, and then you, with this body that has an affinity for magic just waiting for you to touch it, and you never have.”

He wrinkled his nose. “You say it like it’s some kind of tragedy.”

“Well isn’t it?”

“No!”

“Okay,” she said decisively. “That’s what we’re going to do tomorrow.”

“What is?”

“I’m going to teach you magic.”

Felix moved his chair back. “No,” he said.

“Yes!”

“I refuse,” he said.

“Come on, I’ve tutored tons of people before.”

“But not me,” he said.

“How hard can it be?”

“It’s not about-” He broke off and sighed. “People will see us.”

“So?”

“So they might think… things.”

“What things? That you can do magic? That maybe you’ll lose the element of surprise if people see you practising?”

He was staring at her, dumbfounded.

“I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” she said. “People see you practising with a sword all the time and you still manage to win matches. And it might be the only way to switch back.”

“Okay,” he said, as if in a daze. “Whatever. Let’s do it.”


	7. Once More, With Feeling

When Felix awoke in Annette’s bed for the third time after a restless sleep, he didn’t even bother wondering if the spell had worn off yet. He knew the feel of her now, the lightness and smallness of her, the lack of hand-eye coordination as he hauled himself out of bed and almost tripped over a chair he was certain hadn’t been there last night, blinking in the morning light that streamed through the curtains. If the spell hadn’t worn off on its own before, it wasn’t going to have now. He didn’t bother getting angry at it. The spell wasn’t the problem. Annette wasn’t the problem.

_He_ was the problem.

He sat in front of her mirror, red hair loose and sleep-tousled past his shoulders, blue eyes sleepy.

Well. Nobody else was here to see him. The curtains were closed. He picked up a candle from the table and touched the wick tentatively. Nothing happened. Did he feel something? He wasn’t sure. He sighed, a breathy sound in her voice, almost musical. Could-?

No.

He saw himself blush at the very thought of it.

Instead he combed his hair out and separated it in two as she’d shown him that first morning. He took one half, split it in three, and watched himself in the mirror until he had worked out how to arrange his fingers to avoid losing track of the strands. The resulting plait wasn’t the most neat or even thing in the world, but it was something. She could tell him how to put it up in the loops she wore later.

He considered her little jars and bottles of cosmetics and perfume, but, remembering what had happened to Ingrid yesterday, decided against it.

He did allow himself, in the end, to hum a quiet few bars of a half-remembered song just to see how it sounded in her voice. Not quite as good as when it was the real Annette singing.

Once he was ready and had deciphered as much of Annette’s chaotic planner as he could, he made his way to his own room, tiptoeing past Sylvain’s door (needlessly, as he could hear soft giggles emanating from within).

He hadn’t even considered the possibility that the boar would open his door as Felix passed, but that was what happened. Dimitri’s door opened with a violent thud and Annette’s scared-woodland-creature little body jumped about three feet in the air, emitting a sound that he had not given it permission to make.

Dimitri looked shocked at the sight of her, his human mask and manners firmly on. “Annette! I never realised! I do apologise, I thought it might be… Well. Never mind.” But Felix saw his eyes wander to Sylvain’s closed door. He’d have to get up a lot earlier than that - or a lot later - to catch Sylvain in the act. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Felix would not be the problem here. He would not. Annette’s heart was still racing. “That’s fine,” he managed. “Your highness.” There. Easy. He didn’t choke on the words or anything. Not that they were his words anyway. They were Annette’s words. This was Annette standing here right now, and he himself was in his room.

“May I ask what you’re doing up here?” asked Dimitri, the very picture of earnest gallantry. That was what made it all the worse; he was so good at this stiff politeness, as good as he was at bloodshed. “Was there something you needed of me?”

“No,” said Felix, pretending as hard as he could that he was Annette. “I was just coming to talk to Felix.” His own name still sounded strange in his mouth. He hoped it didn’t sound strange to Dimitri. Of everyone, Dimitri was the one who was most used to living in disguise. He was the one most likely to see through Felix's attempts.

“He’s not here, I’m afraid,” said Dimitri. He brushed hair out of his face. It fell back almost immediately over his eyes, and he shook it impatiently out of the way. “He gets up rather early, I’m afraid.”

“Do you know where he is?” Felix couldn’t quite manage Annette’s brand of cheerful curiosity, but at least he managed to avoid his usual tonal territory.

“In the training ground, most probably.”

He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Are you sure he’s out?”

“I heard him leave. It sounded like he dropped his sword outside my door. It quite woke me up.”

Felix frowned.

“Oh, I’m sure it was an accident.”

“Okay,” said Felix. “I’ll go find him. Thanks.”

“You’re most welcome, Annette.” Dimitri all but bowed before he shut the door again.

Felix shuddered as he padded back down the corridor, stepping over cats and neatly sidestepping Ferdinand knocking determinedly at Edelgard’s door. The old familiar anger was beginning to settle on him again, but upside down, pointing inward.

“ _I don’t think the problem is me…_ ”

_You idiot_ , he thought.

Still so disquieting to think about, being told by his own body in his own voice how sad it was that he had this block or whatever it was between him and whatever magic was lying in wait for him. Like it was a tragedy. What tragedy? He’d never been interested, that was all. He didn’t need it. His sword was enough. It had always been enough. And it wasn’t as though he’d asked for any of this to happen.

_Stop making excuses. You’re better than this._

Annette was in the training ground still, running through what looked like that form he’d been having trouble with in class, her shirt clinging to her back. As good as her word, he thought. She didn’t look up immediately when he entered the training ground, so absorbed in the work.

“Felix,” he said.

Even then it took her a second to remember that was who she was. She wore her surprise guilelessly. “Oh! Annette!”

“Come here,” he said, and led her to the edge of the training ground.

“What is it?” she asked, out of breath. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Drink some water.”

She did so. “I was just trying to do it how Professor Byleth showed me. And no magic at all. Promise.”

“How long have you been training?” he asked.

“You mean like, in my life, or…?”

“This morning.”

“Oh, um.” She looked up at the sky. “I’m not sure. I tried to get here early, and then I just got into the rhythm, I guess. Your body has great stamina!”

“You’re done for now,” he said.

“Aw, but F-Annette, I was just getting the hang of that step and cut, you know, the one that goes-”

He took hold of her wrist before she could mime the blow, sword still in hand. Annette’s body was much weaker than his, but it was still his mind behind it, his will, and it was still Annette’s eager-to-please mind behind his. He stopped her easily. “You’re done for the day.”

“But-”

“No buts. You can’t wear yourself out like that. You have class later. Pace yourself.”

She let out a frustrated sigh, but sat down on a bench. “Oh, that feels good actually.”

“Don’t sit for too long,” he said. “You’ll cramp up that way.”

She tried to swing her legs, but they were longer than the ones she was used to, and she scuffed the ground with her heels instead. “You’re being very nice to me today,” she said neutrally, but he could see the bright interest in her eyes.

“I’m being nice to _me_ ,” he said.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” she asked. “Or did you just want to make sure I wasn’t ruining your reputation?” She nudged him. “Is that it?”

“No,” he said, unmoved. “Stop that.”

She sat back and took another drink of water.

“My sword needs maintenance. And I’m not going to let you at it without someone to tell you what to do.”

Her face lit up. It made him look younger and infinitely more embarrassing. “I can polish your sword?”

“ _Your_ sword,” he said. It didn’t look like anyone was listening, but he’d rather not take the chance of being overheard. Annette’s voice carried further than he was used to. It wouldn’t be quiet in the way that his was, whatever he tried.

“Okay, okay, my sword. But you’re sure?”

He nodded.

“Oh, I could just-!” She threw her arms wide, and caught herself at the last second, saving Felix from a hug. “But I won’t,” she said, with more dignity.

“Good.”

“And hey.” She reached out and took one of his plaits in her hand. “You did my hair.”

“It was more trouble than it’s worth. I don’t know why you bother.”

She was smiling in satisfaction anyway. “Thank you.”

“My way is better. And Mercedes said it looked fine anyway yesterday.”

She was almost glowing with pleasure. “I’ll show you how to tie it up later.”

“If you have to.”

“I do,” she said cheerfully.

He wouldn’t smile. Instead he talked her through his sword, how to check for wear and judge what needed to be replaced and when. He knew the sword, of course; knew that it was in good condition, nothing wearing out, but he would have checked it himself out of habit anyway, so she would have to do the same. It was hard to let her do it herself, kneeling on the ground while he stayed up on the bench, but anyone who had looked over and seen Felix allowing anyone else to handle one of his swords would have been instantly suspicious, and their first thought would not have been “magical accident”.

“You know,” said Annette, oiling the blade in long slow strokes (“Point it away from you. Don’t move the sword, move the cloth. Don’t press against the sharp edge.”). “I was thinking all last night about what might have gone wrong.”

“I thought you already knew.”

“Well, that’s obviously something to do with it. But I was wondering if it might be something to do with who casts the spell as well. I caused it, so maybe I should be the one to fix it.”

“But you did.”

“I mean my body. And maybe I just have more magic than you! That might be important too. It’s a powerful spell. Maybe I _was_ the problem.”

Felix set his jaw. “You weren’t the problem.”

“Aww.” She tilted her head. “Don’t look so sad. I didn’t realise how sad I could look! You’re going to melt my heart!”

“ _My_ heart,” he grumbled.

“Well, if you don’t want it to be all melted when you switch back, you’d better cheer up! Come on, maybe we’re both the problem!”

“Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

“Well, I find it reassuring, anyway.”

Of course she would. “When do you want to go over… the thing you were going to teach me?”

She put the sword down. “Oh, any time you’re free! Let’s see, today you should have…”

“Kitchen duty.”

“Right! Wow, look at you. So on top of things!”

She was being nice to him. He tried not to bristle at it. _She doesn’t mean it_ , he told himself.

“How about after dinner, then?”

He would have much rather skipped class and got it out of the way now, but there was no changing Annette’s nature. “Fine,” he said. “And sheathe your sword. Someone’ll trip over it.”

And knowing Annette’s body, it would probably be him.

*

Annette hadn’t been lying when she said she had tutored plenty of people before, but she had to admit that she’d never done anything like this. She’d helped people with specific aspects of magic they were having trouble with, and studied with friends through particularly complicated exercises, but she’d never taught someone how to use magic at all. It would be like teaching someone to see. You just open your eyes and it’s either there or it isn’t. You just… what do you do? Reach for it? With what?

She chewed over the problem through the day’s classes, mulled it over at mealtimes. At any other time she would have followed the thought down any number of rabbitholes by now, but perhaps something about Felix’s body, or his mind, or wherever her Annette-ness was hanging out right now, seemed tuned to brood over things to the exclusion of all else.

Oh, but maybe that was the secret…

“Felix? Hello? Are you there?”

She blinked to see Ingrid sitting across from her at the table, looking at her curiously over her plate. “Sorry,” she said. “What were you saying?”

“I just asked how you were.”

“Oh. Fine!” The secret was gone, whatever it might have been. She tried not to be too disappointed. “How are you?”

“I’m fine? Anyway, I just wanted to apologise for being sharp with you the other night.” Ingrid took a deep breath and closed her eyes, brusquely penitent. “So. I’m sorry.”

“Apologise?" _Keep up, Annie._ "Sorry, what are you apologising for?”

“Felix, do you have to-? Ugh. No. Sorry.” Ingrid took another calming breath. “Sorry. No temper. I said some things to you that were uncalled for.”

Annette remembered the night in the library. “Oh, that? You don’t have to apologise for that. You say things like that all the time!” According to what Felix had said, anyway.

Ingrid wouldn't be swayed. She looked as though she was about to ride into battle, dark and intense, braced for pain. “No, I do. I jumped to conclusions and I didn’t give you a chance to explain yourself. And then I… I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

Annette had no idea what Ingrid was talking about, but she was obviously winding herself up into a frenzy about _something_ , so she tried an awkward smile to defuse the situation. “I wasn’t embarrassed. My behaviour was out of line. You were within your rights to call me out on it!”

Ingrid only looked even more pained. “No, I mean about-”

“Cherished friends, no need to feel despondent, for I have arrived!” Sylvain set his plates down with a flourish beside Annette’s.

“No one was waiting for you,” said Ingrid.

“And a good day to you too, Ingrid.”

She rolled her eyes.

“So,” he said, “what are we talking about? Why do we all look so solemn today?”

Ingrid shot Annette a worried look. “Nothing,” she said, too quickly.

“Real convincing,” said Sylvain. “But don’t worry, I won’t pry. If my _best friends_ want to keep secrets from me, that’s _fine_.”

“We’d never keep secrets from you!” said Annette earnestly.

Sylvain appraised her. “You know, I almost believed that. Well done. Anyway, Felix, you up for watching me destroy Ingrid at chess tonight?”

Ingrid picked up her knife and fork. “You will not destroy me. Seeing you play chess will be like watching a horse perform an opera.”

“Are you kidding? Chess was _made_ for me. The elaborate dance between two minds, guessing each other’s intentions from a flicker of the eye, a twitch of the lips? The silent struggle for dominance? Planning the perfect defence and honing the exact right strategy to take the queen?”

“Sylvain, chess is about taking the _king_.”

Sylvain grinned. “I wasn’t talking,” he said, “about the piece.”

Annette cocked her head. "But-? Oh." She fell silent. Blinked. Even Felix's stoic complexion glowed with embarrassment.

“Go sit somewhere else,” said Ingrid.

Sylvain's face fell. “Whaaat? I was joking! Joking! Why are you always so cruel to me?”

“I wonder,” she said flatly. “I guess we’ll never know.”

“So how about it, Felix?” asked Sylvain. “You in?”

Annette bit her lip. “Oh, um, tonight? I’m really sorry, I have other plans.”

Sylvain groaned. “Your swords are still going to be there tomorrow, I promise. Come on. It’ll be fun.”

“No, it’s not training. I’m just planning on…” How could she phrase this in a way that Felix would approve of later? “...hanging out with Annette. She’s helping me with some homework.”

Sylvain raised his eyebrows. “Oh,” he said. “Well, good for you.”

“Thanks? I guess?”

“Homework, huh,” said Ingrid, in the same exaggeratedly calm way. “Well, have fun. Wait.” She frowned at Sylvain. “What do _you_ know about it?”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“Know about what?” Annette asked.

“Nothing!” said Ingrid, too loudly. “Nothing at all!” She and Sylvain exchanged meaningful glances.

“So,” said Sylvain to Annette, nudging her with his shoulder, “what are you going to- Ow!” He frowned across the table. “What was that for?” he asked Ingrid.

“What was what for?” she said sweetly. “Anyway, Felix, I was thinking about doing some sparring on horseback some time. There are a few things I want to try out. Would you be my infantry opponent?”

“Sure! I’d be glad to.” It was almost a disappointment that she’d probably be back in her own body by then, if everything went right tonight. _Think of it as a little treat for Felix when he gets back._

“You’re in a very good mood lately, Felix,” said Sylvain innocently. “I wonder if- ow! Ingrid! Will you stop?”

Ingrid sipped her tea elegantly. “Sorry, my foot slipped.”

_Remind me never to get on Ingrid’s bad side._

Ingrid and Sylvain continued to bicker, and Annette’s Felix-mind sank back into its thoughts, wearing that same groove over and over again, a caged wolf pacing. She had been so close to a revelation before Ingrid had interrupted her. Felix’s mind was too slow and careful for this. If only she was in her own body, following her own thoughts around in their zigzagging controlled chaos, a mess where she nevertheless knew the location of every little detail.

She shot to her feet. “Gah!”

_Yes! That! That’s the answer!_

Ingrid and Sylvain fell silent, staring at her. A lot of people were looking at her, actually. She sat down again, as though nothing had happened, and continued eating. People were used to this sort of behaviour coming from Annette. They were much less accustomed to seeing it from Felix.

“Uh, Felix?” Sylvain peered at her. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s great!” she blurted. “I just realised the answer to something that’s been on my mind, that’s all! Nothing interesting! You wouldn’t be interested!”

“Dare I ask, is it something to do with-?”

“Sylvain, if you don’t shut up I _swear_ ,” snapped Ingrid.

“Just trying to be a supportive friend!”

“The best way for you to support him is to stay out of it.”

Annette still didn’t have any idea what they were talking about, and at this point she was afraid to ask. “Good luck with the chess game tonight,” she said. “Sorry I can’t be there.”

“I’ll give you the blow by blow description of my victory tomorrow,” said Sylvain with a wink. Ingrid sighed and he just grinned even wider.

“Enjoy your evening,” said Ingrid.

“And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” added Sylvain.

“Please, what kind of worthless advice is that?”

“You just don’t get it because you’re a girl-”

“Name _one thing_ you wouldn’t do, you dog-”

“There are plenty of things, actually!”

“Name one of them!”

“I’m not giving away my secrets to you!”

Annette left quietly while they argued.


	8. The Discovery of Fire

Felix waited in the Blue Lions classroom for Annette to arrive. It wasn’t a place he often came when he didn’t have to be here. He watched the fishkeeper pass the open doorway on his way to his quarters, buckets of bait slung over his shoulder. The candles were unlit. Annette’s words kept playing in his head, how she lit them with magic. It felt like it would be cheating not to, but he hadn’t been able to do it yet, so he sat in the dark.

He wasn’t sure Annette would be able to help him. And what would they do then, when she realised that whatever she had felt in his body was a fluke and he actually had no magical affinity of his own? Live like this forever, or until the magic wore off on its own? Would they finally have to tell someone? _She said she’d get into trouble._ Well, fine, maybe they wouldn’t be able to tell anyone at the Academy.

Would someone eventually notice? What would they say then?

“Oh, you are here!”

Felix watched himself enter the classroom with a sword at his hip, full of energy.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” Annette asked.

“I like the dark.”

“I hope you don’t mind a little light then.”

“Go ahead.”

There was a blue flash and crackle and a candle flared to life.

Annette clicked her fingers and made another spark. “It’s not as easy as using fire, but it gets the job done. It’s just like using flints.”

“I hope you aren’t expecting me to be able to do that,” said Felix. “Because I can’t.”

“Sure you can! You just saw yourself do it!”

He sighed. She wouldn’t understand.

She drew the sword at her belt - he tried not to cringe at the sound of the blade scraping the sheath - and laid it on the table in front of him.

“What’s this for?” he asked. Maybe she’d ask him to fall on it when he inevitably failed. The thought was almost cheering; at least that was something he was confident he could do relatively well.

“So I was thinking,” began Annette, “about how we’re in each other’s bodies.”

“I’m glad you’ve finally noticed.”

“And how it makes everything different - like, even the way we think. Have you noticed that?”

“Yes,” he said grudgingly.

“So, I know how my mind works. And also how I learned how to control my magic in the first place - remember what I said about having an object to focus on?”

“Sort of.” _Get to the point._ He bit his tongue.

“I thought having something familiar might help you focus your thoughts and the magic. And what’s familiar to you _and_ helpful for using magic in combat? Sword! Ta-da!” She gestured dramatically at the sword on the table.

He touched his sword for the first time since they’d switched bodies. Unexpected, how deeply he’d missed it.

“Ah!” Annette pointed. “Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“There was a spark!”

“No there wasn’t,” he said.

“There totally was! I saw it!”

“You’re just seeing what you want to see.” He took it in his hand. Heavier than he remembered. The hilt didn’t sit right in Annette’s hand. The balance was wrong. No, he thought. The sword hadn’t changed. It was just as well-balanced as it had ever been. _He_ was the problem.

“How does it feel?” Annette asked.

“Wrong.”

“I think you mean _different_ , because there’s no such thing as wrong here, but whatever. Describe it.”

“It doesn’t feel right,” said Felix. “I don’t know. It just feels wrong.” He lifted it, the tip dipping, Annette’s skinny wrists straining to keep it up. He squeezed his fingers around the hilt to bring it down in a small, controlled swing and almost cut the table in half, unable to stop it where he wanted it to stop. He held it two-handed, which was a little better, but still not enough.

“Whoops,” said Annette. “Careful.”

He glared at her. Easy for her to be so nice when she was sitting on all of his hard-won strength.

“How does the weight feel, how does the hilt feel in your hands? What does the binding feel like against your skin? What does the edge feel like, what’s the temperature of it? Stuff like that.”

“It feels like a sword. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Just describe it.”

“No. I feel…stupid.”

“That’s okay!” she said. “Just think about it then. You don’t have to say anything out loud. Close your eyes if it helps.”

He closed his eyes. He didn’t think it would help much, but at least it would mean he wasn’t aware of his own body watching him with a stranger’s eyes.

“Now feel it in as much detail as you possibly can,” said his own voice. Not helping.

He felt the binding on the hilt, the smooth, worn spots where his own fingers rested, the heavy coolness of it, a fraying edge. He ran his hand up the cold blade, felt the tiny nicks and imperfections in it, some from its forging, some from wear and age, some from use.

“There,” he said. “I’ve felt it. Now what?”

“Keep going.”

He sighed. He felt the ornamentation on the crossguard, the shape of the pommel. He felt the tip, sharp, cold. He pressed the tip of his finger against it almost out of annoyance. His father had always taught him never to draw a blade unless he intended to use it, and whatever he might think of his father’s opinions on anything else, the man knew weapons. He pressed harder to drive that thought from his mind.

_Focus._

It was almost as though there was something else there to feel, something larger, out of reach. Almost intangible. He reached. Pressed so hard against the tip of the sword that his finger slipped.

_This isn’t your body._

He opened his eyes.

“Everything okay?” Annette asked.

He closed his hand around the tip of his finger. “Sorry,” he said.

“What for?”

“I should be treating your body more carefully.”

She laughed. “It’s fine, I promise. You’re already a lot less accident-prone than me. How is it?”

“I don’t know how it’s supposed to be.”

She continued to be entirely unbothered by his irascible tone. “Well, do you feel anything?”

He looked down at the sword. “...Maybe.”

“Maybe like you’re not sure, or maybe like you don’t want to admit it?” she asked teasingly.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“No!” She looked surprised. “I’m sorry, no, I didn’t mean to imply that.”

Why did everything come out like this? Why couldn't he just say something normal? “I’ll try again,” he said brusquely.

“Okay. Don’t worry about my body or anything. I’m here. I’ll make sure you don’t do anything too out of line to it. Your job is just to open yourself up.”

He closed his eyes again. Hilt, crossguard, blade, he knew all of this. Now that he had an idea of what he was looking for, it came much more easily, that background hum like something out of the corner of his eye, that couldn’t be looked at directly. Fine, then, he thought. He was a practised hunter. He could wait as long as it took for it to come to him.

It wasn’t so different from stalking. There was the same feeling of melting into the background, letting his eyes unfocus so he could see the slightest movement. Annette was there to make sure he didn’t do anything bad. And it wasn’t as though he enjoyed the idea of trusting himself to someone else like that, but it was his body watching him, and he was used to relying on his body. So he could do that.

There. Movement. Close.

He grasped it.

“Ow! Dammit!” Orange flicker behind his closed eyelids. Clatter of sword on the table.

“Oh, careful!”

He opened his eyes as Annette began to pat the flames out. He shook his hands. The flames clung to them.

“Let go of it,” she said, but he didn’t want to. “Felix!”

He let go. The fire went out, and the room seemed darker without it, though the candles were still lit. Why did anyone ever let it go? It was like walking around with his hands over his ears. He looked at Annette, watching him through his own eyes, and wondered how she was managing in his body, without such easy access to it as she would have had in her own. He should ask her. How? How could he put that into words?

“You can’t call me that,” he said instead.

She sighed loudly, “I’m sorry, _Annette_ , that was very rude of me. Come on, how are you not more impressed? That was really impressive!”

He doubted it. As she’d said, her body was attuned to magic. If anything, it was impressive that he’d gone so long without triggering it.

“Impressive? It wouldn’t have incinerated a cat.”

“Well, okay, firstly that’s not what we use magic for, and secondly, yes it was! I’m the one with experience, so I’m the one who gets to decide if it’s impressive or not!”

“Whatever,” he said.

“Do you want to try switching back again?” she asked, more quietly.

“Now? Isn’t that a bit… advanced?”

“I mean, sure, but I’ll be here too.” She flashed him an encouraging smile. “We’ll do it together.”

“Won’t we need-?”

“Got you covered!” She reached under the table and pulled out the knives and the bunch of herbs, and dropped a stub of chalk in front of him.

He picked up the chalk. He could almost feel something in it when he concentrated now, echoes of previous sigils, maybe. “What do I do?” he asked.

She positioned herself behind him. “Okay,” she said, “first you…” She took hold of his hand around the chalk. Felix stiffened. She pulled away, smiling apologetically. “Oh. Sorry. With my words. I remember.”

“No, it’s…” Felix felt himself flushing. “It’s fine. Easier this way.”

“If you’re sure!” She took hold of his hand again. “Ready?”

He nodded.

“Keep yourself open like you did with the sword, okay? And, um, don’t tell Professor Byleth that we drew a thaumatokinetic sigil right on the table. I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to be doing this. Here goes!”

She drew the sigil in long, precise strokes using Felix’s hand. He tried to focus the way he had on the sword, but there was no sword now. The chalk, then. Smooth with fine dust, the small cylinder of it, the edges worn round from use… His mind kept going to Annette’s hand on his. His hand on Annette’s hand. Stealthily, like taking a step on a forest floor without breaking a branch or disturbing a leaf, he let his focus flow up and out. His body against Annette’s. Annette’s firm movements, guided by opaque knowledge and a confidence that was rare in her.

“Tell me if I’m being too rough, okay?” she said. “Your hands are crazy strong. The amount of _pens_ I’ve broken these past few days. I think people are starting to suspect you have an anger problem.”

“...It’s fine,” Felix managed, voice tight. He was a little relieved she couldn’t see his face. He tried to focus on the magic instead, feeling subtle changes in the timbre of it with each line he and Annette drew. And he felt it when she joined the last lines up, a secure tightness in that net behind the air.

“There!” she said. “Good sigil. Feel it?”

He nodded.

“See? You just had to learn what to look for.”

They took a knife and a branch of red weaveroot each, and sat, as they had the last time, facing each other.

Felix was about to break the odd tension by asking, “So, what now?” but he felt it start. He must have let it show on his face because Annette laughed.

It didn’t take long for him to realise that he didn’t know what was happening or what was going to happen, and he did not like this state of affairs. Maybe they could do it another way, he thought, as the feeling rose like a wind. They could find some other solution. Something was pulling at him. He kept blinking to clear his eyes though whatever mist was in front of them seemed invisible.

Annette sat across from him, his own body sat across from him, eyes closed, serene.

Something was _pulling_ at him. He tried to clench his hands into fists but his fingertips only twitched weakly. The force was stronger than him. He was growing smaller, stretched. There was nothing to hold onto in this nowhere place.

_No,_ he thought. _No, no, no._

Everything vanished, or he did.

He opened his eyes and saw Annette.

*

They agreed never to speak of it to anyone.

“No harm done!” said Annette cheerfully. “I am _exhausted_ , so I think I’m just going to bed, if that’s okay.”

“Same.” Felix flexed his arms and shoulders. Annette hoped she hadn’t got him too battered in the fight with Professor Jeritza.

“Is there, um, anything I should know about first?” she asked. “You know. Damage control tomorrow. You haven’t, um, hit anyone else? Not that I’m accusing you of-!”

“I haven’t,” said Felix firmly.

“Okay, good!” She sighed in relief. “Just wanted to be sure!”

“I’m pretty certain Ingrid will forgive you.”

“Wait, what?”

“Good night,” said Felix. He picked up Professor Jeritza’s blades and sheathed his sword.

“Felix, what? What’ll she forgive me for? What did you do?”

But he was already gone.

_That’s for tomorrow’s Annie to work out, I guess_ , she thought, and snuffed the candles with a wave of her hand. She grinned to herself at the ease of it.

Outside the classroom the night insects were calling from the flowerbeds, and the moon shone down on the monastery, lending the pale stone its glow. Time to sleep. In her own room! Finally! And Mercie would be at her door with treats for breakfast, and she could get back to all the things she’d left undone, and-

A student passed her, hefting buckets in each hand, and Annette’s heart sank a little despite herself when he noticed her.

Back to trying to balance a whole Academy’s worth of errands…

She waited for the inevitable call, the plaintive plea for help that she knew she wouldn’t be able to resist.

It never came. The student looked away quickly and hurried on his way, buckets clanking.

Annette giggled. _Thanks, Felix._


	9. Epilogue: Home's Face Changes When You're Away

Felix set down the bottle of sword oil and soft cloth, kneeling on the training ground floor, facing the wall. He balanced his sword in his hands, closed his eyes, and reached. It wasn’t as easy as it had been from Annette’s body, but it was there. He opened his eyes and tried to hold the magic without touching it, let it float of its own accord, nearby. He touched the pommel of his sword and it sparked.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Felix dropped the sword and turned to see Ingrid watching him, a string of horseshoes over her shoulder like a brace of rabbits. She wasn’t wearing make-up today. He wondered if she ever would. “Where else would I be?”

She unsuccessfully hid a smile. “I can think of a few places.”

“Maybe you should go to those places if you’re just going to play games.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“Like what?” he asked. He picked up the cloth and ran it up his blade.

“I was going to ask you how it went, but obviously…”

“How what went?”

Ingrid sighed. “Okay, okay, hint taken. We won’t talk about it. I’m sorry it didn’t go well, though.”

Felix froze. _Oh,_ he thought. _That._ “Are you talking about Annette?” he asked, very quietly.

“Well, yeah. We thought you… you know. And she… you know. You seemed really happy to be going to see her, so...”

“I’m not allowed to be happy now?”

Ingrid looked taken aback. Why did everything he said have to sound so hostile? “What? How-? We wanted you to be-” She broke off with a frustrated sigh. “Okay, fine, I’m done, I’ll leave you alone. See you in class.” She turned, hair swinging behind her.

“No, wait.”

He wasn’t sure who was more surprised, him or Ingrid. Well, he’d said it now, and she’d turned back.

“Sit down,” he said, inclining his head at the ground beside him.

“Why?” she asked, but she sat.

“You’re here now, aren’t you?” he asked, a little irritably. How did Annette do it? “How have you been? What have you been doing?”

“Felix, are you asking me to… chat?”

“Nothing’s keeping you here,” he snapped.

“No, I just-”

He didn’t get to find out what Ingrid just, however, because Sylvain chose that moment to poke his head into the training ground, the black eyes Felix had given him finally fading.

“Knock knock!”

Ingrid shook her head slightly at him.

Sylvain ignored her. “Looks like someone forgot to invite me to the party.” He sat down by Ingrid and gave Felix a sympathetic look. “How you holding up?”

Felix narrowed his eyes.

“Wondering how I knew? Glad you asked. So, I noticed you spent the night alone.”

“You’re foul,” said Ingrid.

Sylvain raised a finger. “But perceptive!”

“Look,” said Felix, “whatever both of you have imagined I spent my night doing, you’re wrong. We were working on homework.”

“Sure you were,” said Sylvain. “Annette wanted to know how to properly handle a sword, so you took yours out and-”

“You know I’m not going to let you finish that sentence, right?” said Ingrid.

He winked at her. “That’s okay, I think I got my point across.”

“I’m going to breakfast,” said Felix, tired of trying. “Come if you want.”

Of course they followed him, Sylvain making jokes and Ingrid trying to ignore him as she hefted her string of horseshoes.

“Give me those,” said Felix.

Ingrid looked at him. “What?”

“Come on.” He held out his hand and looked stubbornly at her feet.

She handed the horseshoes over. “Thanks.”

“I’m not doing you a favour,” he said. “You keep clattering them together. It’s annoying.”

“Whatever you say.”

As they got to the door of the training ground, Sylvain nudged him. “Looking good, by the way,” he said.

Felix frowned at him.

Sylvain gestured at his chin and winked.

Felix frowned harder.

“If you ever have any more questions, just let me know, okay? I’ve got your back.”

“Okay?” he said.

Remind him to ask Annette what she’d done now.

*

Annette scribbled down her notes furiously, flicking back and forth between chapters and filling the air with dust. It was weird to be back in her own body. She was still in the habit of trying to be extra gentle with things so she didn’t accidentally break them, and she was holding the pen so lightly it slipped out of her grip and made a faint line across her notes. She picked it up again. _You’re a normal person again, Annie. You don’t have to be so careful._

“Annette?” said a voice at her shoulder.

“Oh, Dorothea!” She put her pen down again. “Hi! What can I help you with?”

“I was wondering if you had time now to run through that seminar on thaumatokinetics with me.”

“Oh!” said Annette. “Um.” She glanced down at her notes. It wasn’t homework or anything, or something she’d been asked to do. This was just for fun. Which meant that really it should be a lower priority than helping Dorothea. But…

“You know,” she said, “actually, it’s not really a good time. How about tomorrow?”

THE END


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